Install Claude Code and Codex on ITSC Cluster (No sudo)

Since we don’t have sudo access, we need to install npm via conda in a dedicated environment. Also, we need to set up global access to the npm binaries to avoid conda env PATH conflicts.

Install npm via conda

conda create -n basic_tools python=3.11
conda activate basic_tools
conda install npm

Set up global access

Create a dedicated tool directory and symlink only the needed binaries, avoiding conda env PATH conflicts:

mkdir -p ~/toolsmiao

# symlink node and npm
ln -s $(conda env list | grep basic_tools | awk '{print $NF}')/bin/node ~/toolsmiao/node
ln -s $(conda env list | grep basic_tools | awk '{print $NF}')/bin/npm ~/toolsmiao/npm

Add to your shell config (~/.bashrc):

export PATH=$HOME/toolsmiao:$HOME/toolsmiao/bin:$PATH

Install Claude Code and Codex

# set global install prefix to ~/toolsmiao
npm config set prefix ~/toolsmiao

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
npm install -g @openai/codex

This way claude and codex binaries land directly in ~/toolsmiao/bin/ — no conda activation needed after the initial setup.