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Keyboard

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.

Any output can level up into an interactive page — one sentence does it

← Tips Prompting

Any output can level up into an interactive page — one sentence does it

The upgrade that works on every report, CSV, or checklist Claude produces — "turn this into a single self-contained interactive HTML file I can open by double-clicking." No server, no installs, no IT ticket; the file travels by email and opens in any browser.

beginner

Every report Claude writes as , it can also build as a small interactive page. The upgrade is always the same sentence:

Turn this into a single self-contained interactive HTML file I can open by double-clicking — no server, no internet, no external libraries.

The phrasing matters, word by word:

  • single self-contained file — everything (styles, script, data) inside one .html, so it travels by email and Teams like any attachment.
  • open by double-clicking — no dev server, no localhost, no IT involvement. Works on any laptop with a browser, which is every laptop.
  • no external libraries — nothing fetched from the internet, so it works offline and there’s no dependency to get blocked by the proxy.

What this unlocks, concretely: a complaints CSV becomes a clickable heatmap with drill-down quotes; a policy diff becomes a side-by-side viewer with changes highlighted; an onboarding checklist becomes a page with checkboxes that remember their state; meeting action items become .ics files that open straight into Outlook.

Add the details you care about as plain sentences — “clicking a row shows the source”, “checkbox state survives closing the page”, “accent colour #007a8a” — and iterate by describing what you see, not by reading code.

And when the page misbehaves visually, remember Claude can look at its own work: “take a screenshot of the page in a headless browser and fix what looks wrong.” You don’t have to be the only QA in the loop.

Every use case in the hub ends with a “level up” step built on this sentence. Learn it once, apply it to anything.

Next tip →

Don't check Claude's work by hand — make it prove it

The strongest verification habit in the hub — after Claude produces an output, ask it to verify its own work with real commands (grep the quotes, recompute the sums, re-run the logic) and show you the output. Commands either pass or fail; assurances always pass.