False warning: native installation path is not in PATH even though it already is (Windows)

[qiyuey]

Bug Description

Claude Code shows the following warning on every new session startup:

Warning: Native installation exists but C:\Users\yuchuan.local\bin is not in your PATH

However, the path is already present in the user's PATH environment variable, confirmed via PowerShell:

[System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('PATH', 'User')
# Output includes: C:\Users\yuchuan\.local\bin

The warning appears on every new session despite the path being correctly configured.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Claude Code on Windows
2. Confirm C:\Users\<user>\.local\bin is in the user PATH (via System Environment Variables or PowerShell registry query)
3. Open a new terminal session and run claude
4. Warning appears every time on startup

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.3
• Platform: Windows (win32)

Expected Behavior

No warning should appear if the path is already present in the user PATH environment variable.

Possible Root Cause

The detection logic may be reading the current process's inherited %PATH% instead of querying the user PATH from the Windows registry via [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('PATH', 'User'). These can differ depending on how the terminal session was launched, leading to a false positive warning.

[ktsmediaprod]

Additional root cause analysis (Git Bash on Windows)

Same issue here on Windows 11 + Git Bash, Claude Code 2.1.77.

The PATH is correctly set in:

• Windows User PATH ([Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('Path', 'User'))
• Windows Machine PATH
• ~/.bashrc (export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:...")
• which claude resolves correctly

Root cause from the bundled source:

The check in claude.exe does:

let L = (process.env.PATH || "").split(d7.delimiter)

d7.delimiter is path.delimiter from Node.js, which is ; on Windows. But Git Bash sets $PATH with : (colon) delimiters, not ;. So the entire PATH string is treated as one giant entry, and the .some() match always fails.

The subsequent normalization (win32.sep → posix.sep) doesn't help because the split never happened correctly in the first place.

Suggested fix: On Windows, try splitting by both : and ;, or detect Git Bash/MSYS/Cygwin environments and use : as the delimiter. Something like:

const delimiter = process.platform === 'win32' && process.env.MSYSTEM 
  ? ':' 
  : path.delimiter;
const entries = (process.env.PATH || '').split(delimiter);

(MSYSTEM is set by Git Bash/MSYS2 — e.g., MSYSTEM=MINGW64.)

Workaround: DISABLE_INSTALLATION_CHECKS=1 in env suppresses it, but also disables other install checks.

Environment: Windows 11, Git Bash (MINGW64), Claude Code 2.1.77 native install

[github-actions]

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.