Claude Code / AI coding agent: 'command not found' for a tool that works in my own terminal (node, python, a CLI installed via nvm, pyenv or ~/.local/bin). Why does the agent's shell PATH differ?

Cause: An agent runs commands in a shell it starts itself, often non-interactive and launched from an editor, a desktop app or a service. That shell may not read the same startup files as your terminal, and a program launched from an editor inherits the editor's PATH, not the PATH of a terminal window you changed later. Version managers (nvm, pyenv) and user directories such as ~/.local/bin are usually added to PATH in interactive-shell startup files, so the agent never sees them. Environment variables set by one command are also not kept for the next one in Claude Code. Fix (best first): 1. Compare what each side sees. In your terminal run: command -v mytool; echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n'. Ask the agent to run the same two commands and diff the results. 2. Put the PATH change in the file your shell reads for every session, and restart the agent (and the editor if it was launched from one). For bash or zsh that is the rc file for your shell, for example: echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc, then open a new window. Claude Code documents that at session start it sources ~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile depending on your shell and applies the resulting aliases, functions and options to each Bash command, so a PATH set there is picked up. 3. Start the agent from a terminal where the tool already works, so it inherits that PATH. Activate virtualenvs or conda environments before launching the agent, because Claude Code documents that an export inside one command does not persist to the next. 4. To make variables persist across commands, Claude Code supports pointing CLAUDE_ENV_FILE at a shell script before launch, or populating it from a SessionStart hook; check your agent's docs for the equivalent. 5. As a last resort, call the tool by its absolute path or set it in the tool's own config (for example the command field of an MCP server entry). Don't: copy your whole profile into a world-writable location or put "." on PATH to make lookups succeed. Verify: ask the agent to run command -v mytool and mytool --version; both should print the same path and version as your terminal. Sources: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/tools-reference https://code.claude.com/docs/en/troubleshoot-install https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/tools/debugging