Integrate Claude with Neovim & Wezterm

8/10/2025

The Ultimate Terminal Upgrade: Integrating Claude with Neovim & Wezterm

Hey there! If you're like me, you live in your terminal. It's fast, it's efficient, & it's home. But lately, with the explosion of AI coding assistants, it's felt like us terminal-diehards have been a little left out. All the fancy integrations seem to be for VS Code or JetBrains. But what if I told you that you could get that same powerful, AI-driven development experience right within your favorite terminal setup?

Well, turns out you totally can. I've been tinkering with my setup for a while now, & I've landed on something that feels pretty close to magical: a combination of Neovim, Wezterm, & the Claude Code CLI. It's a game-changer, honestly. We're talking about a workflow that's distraction-free, incredibly resource-efficient, & deeply integrated into the way we already work. This isn't about bolting on a clunky UI; it's about making your terminal smarter.

In this guide, I'm going to walk you through everything you need to know to get this up & running. We'll cover why this setup is so powerful, how to install & configure all the necessary tools, & some practical ways to use Claude to supercharge your coding. So grab a coffee, fire up your terminal, & let's dive in.

Why Go Terminal-First with AI?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let's talk about why you'd even want to do this. I mean, the web UI for Claude is pretty good, right? & the VS Code extension is popular for a reason. But for those of us who prefer a keyboard-centric, minimalist environment, a terminal-based setup has some serious advantages:

No More Context Switching: This is a big one for me. Hopping between your editor, a web browser, & your terminal a hundred times a day kills your flow. With everything integrated into your terminal, you can stay in one place & keep your focus where it needs to be: on your code.
Speed & Efficiency: Terminals are lightweight. Neovim is lightweight. Compared to a full-blown IDE, this setup is ridiculously fast. It launches instantly, uses fewer resources, & lets you work at the speed of thought (or at least, the speed of your fingers).
Deep Integration & Automation: The beauty of command-line tools is that they're designed to be composed & scripted. This means you can weave your AI assistant into your existing scripts & workflows in ways that just aren't possible with a GUI application. Think custom keybindings that send code snippets to Claude, or scripts that use Claude to automate parts of your development process.
A More Natural "Pair Programmer" Experience: When you have Claude running in a pane next to Neovim, it feels less like a tool you're using & more like a partner you're collaborating with. You can have a conversation with it, ask it to look at your code, & see its suggestions in real-time, all within the same window. It's a much more fluid & natural way to work with an AI.

The Stack: What You'll Need

To get this all working, we're going to use three key components:

The Claude Code CLI: This is the engine of our setup. It's a powerful command-line tool from Anthropic that gives you direct access to Claude's coding abilities. It can read your files, understand your codebase, & even execute commands on your behalf.
Wezterm: This is our terminal multiplexer. If you're using something like tmux or kitty, you can probably adapt this guide, but I've fallen in love with Wezterm. It's GPU-accelerated, highly configurable with Lua, & has great support for things like panes, tabs, & custom keybindings.
Neovim: I probably don't need to sell you on Neovim. It's fast, extensible, & the gold standard for terminal-based editing. We'll be using a plugin to make the integration with Claude even smoother.

Step 1: Installing & Configuring the Claude Code CLI

First things first, we need to get the Claude Code CLI installed on your machine. It's an

npm

package, so you'll need to have Node.js (version 18 or newer) installed.

Once you've got Node.js ready to go, open up your terminal & run the following command: