Your first ten minutes, and what to type

Ask before you build

Read this folder and tell me what it does.

Start by asking for an explanation, not a change. You find out immediately whether it understood the project, and it costs you nothing if it did not.

Plan first on anything big

shift + tab, twice

Shift and tab together cycle the mode. Plan mode makes Claude propose an approach and wait for your approval instead of editing straight away. On a task with more than one moving part, this is the single habit that saves the most time.

Interrupt without fear

esc

Escape stops it mid-thought and hands the keyboard back. You do not have to wait for a wrong answer to finish. Pressing escape twice rewinds the conversation to an earlier point.

Steer while it works

You can type while it is working. A message sent mid-task redirects it in real time — you are not locked out until it finishes.

Start a clean slate between tasks

/clear

A session accumulates everything it has read. When you move to an unrelated task, clear it — answers get sharper and cheaper. Use /compact instead when you want to keep the thread but shrink it.

Come back to yesterday

claude --resume

Lists your past sessions so you can pick one up where it stopped. claude --continue jumps straight back into the most recent one.

See everything available

/help

Lists the slash commands this version has. Others worth knowing early: /model to switch model, /context to see how full the window is, /permissions to pre-approve tools, /memory to edit what Claude remembers, /status for the state of the session.