A team is deploying Claude Code on developer laptops and wants to use — Claude Code Certified Professional Practice — Claude Cert Academy

A team is deploying Claude Code on developer laptops and wants to use Anthropic API keys (not OAuth). Which authentication backend should they configure and where?

• Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in each developer's shell profile; no settings.json change needed
• Set api_key in .claude/settings.json at the project level
• Use claude login --api-key <key> to store it in the system keychain
• Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in settings.json under the env block

Answer: Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in each developer's shell profile; no settings.json change needed

The ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable is the standard way to provide an API key. Placing it in each developer's shell profile (e.g., ~/.zshrc) makes it available globally. Storing an API key in .claude/settings.json is a security risk as that file may be committed. `claude login --api-key` is not a valid subcommand. settings.json does not have an env block for secrets.

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