Upgrade Your Windows, Become a First‑Class AI Citizen

If you’ve used both Windows and macOS, you know the experience of using AI agents on these two operating systems is worlds apart.

The biggest root cause is that Windows’ command‑line tool, PowerShell, is not friendly to AI. Most of the command‑line operations in AI model training data follow the Linux/macOS style.

This often leads to errors when we use agents on Windows, wasting tokens for no reason.

This article will teach you how to upgrade your Windows so that we Windows users can also enjoy the smooth agent experience on a Mac.

First, get to know three names:

For most of us, the computer comes with Windows PowerShell 5.1 – a command environment released in 2016 and built on the old .NET Framework.

Windows PowerShell 5.1 is a system component that handles legacy module compatibility. But when you run today’s AI CLIs, npm scripts, and new tutorials with it, you’ll notice significantly more environment friction. Many commands in Windows PowerShell 5.1 use different legacy default encodings. When files, pipes, logs, and external programs mix together, Chinese characters can become garbled, and JSON or config files may be written in encodings that downstream tools don’t accept.

PowerShell 7 unifies more default scenarios to UTF‑8 without BOM. It doesn’t eliminate all encoding issues, but it reduces a number of common conflicts.

Therefore, we need to upgrade our daily terminal to PowerShell 7.

First, let’s check which version of PowerShell is on your computer. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog, type powershell, and open the corresponding window.

In the PowerShell window, type:

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion

You can clearly see that we are still on PowerShell 5.1.

Now Let’s Install PowerShell 7

1️⃣ Check WinGet

Open Windows Terminal, Command Prompt, or an existing PowerShell, and run:

winget --version

If a version number is returned, you can proceed.

If the system says winget is not found, first update or install Microsoft’s “App Installer” from the Microsoft Store.

2️⃣ Install PowerShell 7

First, confirm that WinGet finds the official Microsoft package:

winget search --id Microsoft.PowerShell --exact

Then install:

winget install --id Microsoft.PowerShell --source winget

A User Account Control window may pop up during installation. Verify the publisher and package ID before continuing.

If you already have PowerShell 7 installed, you can check and upgrade with these commands:

winget list --id Microsoft.PowerShell --upgrade-available
winget upgrade --id Microsoft.PowerShell

3️⃣ Start the New Version with pwsh

After installation, close the current terminal window, open a new one, and type:

pwsh

Then check again:

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion
$PSVersionTable.PSEdition
$PSHOME

Look for three signals:

• The major version shows 7.
• PSEdition shows Core.
• $PSHOME points to PowerShell 7’s installation directory – for example, Program Files\PowerShell\7 or a PowerShell package folder under WindowsApps.

If pwsh says command not found, restart Windows Terminal, VS Code, Cursor, or whatever AI client you’re using. The installer updated PATH, but old processes usually don’t see the new environment variables.

If it still can’t be found, run:

where.exe pwsh
Get-Command pwsh -All

At this point, the installation of PowerShell 7 is complete.

4️⃣ Set PowerShell 7 as the Default Terminal

Here we take Codex as an example. Simply tell Codex to check:

Please run the following commands and tell me the current PowerShell version and executable path:

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion
(Get-Process -Id $PID).Path

If Codex still shows PowerShell 5.1, add the following to your global AGENTS.md:

## Windows Shell Rules

- The current system has PowerShell 7 installed.
- All PowerShell commands must be executed using `pwsh.exe`.
- Do not use the old `powershell.exe`.
- When executing PowerShell commands, use the following form:

  `pwsh.exe -NoLogo -NoProfile -Command "<command>"`

- Before executing any commands for the first time, run:

  `pwsh.exe -NoLogo -NoProfile -Command "$PSVersionTable.PSVersion"`

- If PowerShell 7 is not available, stop and inform the user; do not fall back to Windows PowerShell 5.1.