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Shortcuts

Everyone learns Esc. These are the rest — all checked against Claude Code itself, not copied off a blog.

The three to learn first

If you remember nothing else.

  • Esc Esc
    Stop Claude mid-action The moment Claude starts doing something you did not intend.
  • Esc thenEsc Esc thenEsc
    Clear the input box Your half-written prompt has turned into a mess and you want a clean line.
  • Shift +Tab Shift +Tab
    Cycle permission mode Starting an exploration (plan) or letting an agreed plan run (accept edits). On older Windows setups without VT mode, this is Meta+M instead.

Writing the prompt

Composing, searching, pasting.

  • Ctrl +J Ctrl +J
    Start a new line without sending Any prompt longer than one sentence.
  • Ctrl +R Ctrl +R
    Search your prompt history "What did I type last week that worked?" Inside the search, Ctrl+S cycles the scope: this session → this project → everywhere.
  • Ctrl +S Ctrl +S
    Park the half-written prompt You are three sentences into a prompt and need to go check something.
  • Ctrl +G Ctrl +G
    Edit the prompt in your real editor Writing anything long or carefully structured.
  • Ctrl +V Alt +V
    Paste an image Anything visual. Annotate the screenshot first and it works even better. Ctrl+V, not Cmd+V — macOS keeps Cmd+V for its own paste. Windows and WSL use Alt+V. On WSL both Ctrl+V and Alt+V work.
  • Option +T Alt +T
    Toggle thinking for the next turn One hard question in the middle of otherwise simple work.
  • Ctrl +_ Ctrl +_
    Undo in the input box You deleted half a prompt by accident.

Seeing what happened

What Claude did and what it plans to do.

  • Ctrl +O Ctrl +O
    Toggle the full transcript You want to know what it actually did, not the summary.
  • Ctrl +T Ctrl +T
    Toggle the task checklist Any multi-step task, before it gets far.

Running the session

Long jobs, models, the terminal.

  • Ctrl +B Ctrl +B
    Send the running job to the background A long build, test run, or search you do not want to sit and watch.
  • Option +P Alt +P
    Switch model Between tasks — rarely a good idea mid-task.
  • Option +O Alt +O
    Toggle fast mode Straightforward work where you would rather have speed than depth.
  • Ctrl +Z Ctrl +Z
    Step out to the shell without quitting You need the terminal for one command and do not want to lose the session. Terminal-level shortcut (Unix SIGTSTP), not a Claude Code binding. Windows has no direct equivalent.

The keys are the same on both systems — only the modifier's name changes (macOS calls Alt Option). Run /keybindings in any session to see exactly what is bound on your machine.

Don't swap models in the middle of a conversation

← Tips Workflow & commands

Don't swap models in the middle of a conversation

Switching mid- is the standard move when you're stuck, and it's usually the wrong one — it costs you the cached context and carries the same wrong assumptions into the new model. Pick the model at the start; hand off to a fresh session if you need to change.

both

You’re stuck. The obvious move is to reach for a bigger with /model and try again.

It rarely helps, for two reasons.

The conversation comes with you. Everything that led you into the dead end — the wrong assumption three turns back, the misread error message, the approach that was never going to work — is still in the context. The bigger model inherits all of it and reasons from the same flawed starting point. You changed the engine, not the map.

You pay for the switch. Each model builds its own cache of the conversation. Switching means the new model reads everything from scratch, and switching back does it again. On a long that’s a real cost for no new information.

What to do instead

Pick the model at the start, for the task. Opus-class for architecture, ambiguous problems, and hard debugging. Sonnet-class for multi-file edits and building from a clear spec. Decide once, at launch:

claude --model opus

When you’re genuinely stuck, hand off — don’t escalate. Write a handoff describing what you tried and why it failed, then start a fresh session with the model you want. Fresh context plus the right model beats polluted context plus a bigger model, every time. See the handoff-not-summary tip.

Turning up reasoning without switching models

Often what you actually want isn’t a different model, it’s more thinking from the one you have:

  • /effort — set the reasoning level for the session. The levels are low, medium, high, xhigh and max.
  • — toggle thinking for the next turn only.
  • “think harder” in the .

All three keep your cache and your context intact. Reach for these before reaching for /model.

Next tip →

Drop the persona — "You are a senior engineer…" adds nothing

Role-play preambles were useful for older, weaker and are now dead weight. Replace the persona with three things that actually help — where to look, what "done" means, and how Claude should check itself.

Open it → Back to all tips