Part 1 First steps: Entering the world of the terminal
If you have never used a terminal before, you are probably a little nervous about it. That is normal. Many beginners open a terminal window, see a blinking cursor, and freeze, because nothing on the screen tells you what to type. This part of the book exists to remove that feeling. You do not need to memorize dozens of commands. You need a small, working set of them and a little practice.
Chapter 1 walks you through the terminal itself. You will learn how to open it, move between folders, list files, and run a handful of commands you will keep using in later chapters. There is no need to rush here. Type the commands yourself, even the short ones, so your hands learn the pattern before your head does.
Chapter 2 introduces Homebrew, the tool you will use to install software on your Mac from the command line. It feels strange the first time. You type one line, wait a moment, and a program appears on your computer without ever opening an installer window. After you have done it two or three times, it stops feeling strange and starts feeling ordinary.
Chapter 3 installs Ollama and gets it running. One detail trips up almost every beginner here: when you start the Ollama server, that terminal window is now busy running the server and will not take any more commands. You need to open a second terminal window for everything else. Once that one habit is clear, the rest of the setup falls into place.