4 Claude Code slash commands I use the most (and 8 more)

If you use Claude Code for real work, you probably don’t have just one session open. I usually have a few going at once, in different terminals, for different projects. And that’s where the little annoyances start. Which terminal is the blog one? What was that port number Claude found 20 minutes ago? And where did yesterday’s conversation go after I closed the window?

Claude Code has built-in slash commands for all of that. In this post I’ll show you the four I reach for the most: /rename and /color to tell your sessions apart, /btw to ask a quick question without derailing the work, and /resume to pick up where you left off. Then I’ll share a few more worth knowing, like /recap, /branch, and /rewind, plus a quick-reference table at the end.

TL;DR

• /rename <name> names the current session and shows the name on the prompt bar.
• /color <color> paints the prompt bar, so you can tell sessions apart at a glance.
• /btw <question> asks a side question about the session without adding it to the conversation. It works even while Claude is busy, but it has no tools.
• /resume opens a session picker, or jumps straight to a session by name. From your shell, use claude --continue or claude --resume <name>.
• Also worth knowing: /recap for a one-line summary, /branch to try a different direction, /rewind (or Esc twice) to roll back, and /clear <name> to start fresh without losing the old conversation.

What are Claude Code slash commands?

A slash command is a shortcut you type at the very start of your message, beginning with /, that controls Claude Code itself: switching models, clearing context, managing sessions, and so on. Anything you type after the command name becomes its arguments, like the name in /rename my-session.

You don’t need to memorize them. Type / to see the commands available to you, or type / plus a few letters to filter the list. The skills you install show up in that menu too. If you’re curious how those work, I wrote a beginner’s guide to AI agent skills.

Tell your sessions apart with /rename and /color

When three terminals all say “Claude Code,” it’s way too easy to type into the wrong one. These two commands fix that.

/rename: give the session a name

Type /rename followed by the name you want, and the name shows up on the prompt bar right away. Watch the label in the top-right corner switch from claude code to mule-api-refactor:

Claude Code

❯ /rename mule-api-refactor

⎿ Session renamed to: mule-api-refactor

mule-api-refactor

❯

A good name pays off later too, because you can resume a session by its name (more on that in the /resume section). A few things to know:

• Run /rename with no name and Claude Code generates one from the conversation so far.
• You can name a session as you start it with claude -n mule-api-refactor.
• If another live session on your machine already uses that name, Claude Code gives yours a variant with a two-word suffix (something like mule-api-refactor-graceful-unicorn) and tells you.

/color: paint the prompt bar

/color sets the prompt bar color for the current session. Pass it one of the available colors, and the lines around the prompt and the session name switch to it:

Claude Code

❯ /color pink

⎿ Session color set to: pink

❯ /color cyan

⎿ Session color set to: cyan

❯ /color purple

⎿ Session color set to: purple

mule-api-refactor

❯

You can choose from red, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange, pink, and cyan. Run /color default to go back to normal, or just /color with no argument to get a random one.

The real magic is using both together. A colored bar with a name on it is something you can spot without reading a single line of the conversation.

Ask a side question with /btw

Say Claude is halfway through a long task, and you need a quick fact it already knows, like the port it read from a config file earlier. If you ask in the main chat, that little detour becomes part of the conversation for the rest of the session, taking up context Claude carries around forever.

/btw (as in “by the way”) is the fix. It asks a side question about the current session, and neither the question nor the answer ever enters the conversation history. Here Claude is busy moving flows to a new error handler, and the side question gets its own panel instead of joining the conversation:

Claude Code

❯ move the order flows to the new global error handler

● Starting with the order flows. Reading orders.xml first.

mule-api-refactor

❯

/btw which port did we set the HTTP listener to?

Answering…

8081. It comes from the http.port property in config-dev.yaml, and the listener config reads it as ${http.port}, so changing the property changes the port.

Esc to close

↑/↓ to scroll · c to copy · f to fork · Esc to close

The answer shows up in an overlay that you dismiss with Space, Enter, or Esc. Here’s why I love it:

• It works while Claude is busy. You can run /btw in the middle of a response, and it doesn’t interrupt the main turn.
• It’s cheap. While the conversation’s prompt cache is warm, a side question costs little beyond the answer itself.
• It keeps the conversation clean. Nothing you ask with /btw gets added to the history.

The catch: /btw has no tools. It only answers from what’s already in the conversation, so it can’t read a file, run a command, or search for you. If the answer isn’t in the session yet, /btw won’t find it.

Two keys in the overlay are worth remembering. Press c to copy the answer as Markdown. Press f to fork the question and answer into a background subagent with full tool access, for when you realize your “quick question” needs real work after all. And if you dismissed an answer too fast, run /btw with no question to bring it back.

Pick up where you left off with /resume

You closed the terminal or restarted your laptop, and the conversation is gone. Except it isn’t! Claude Code saves every session locally as you work, so you can go back to it later.

From inside a session, run /resume to open the session picker, or add a name to jump straight to that session:

/resume mule-api-refactor

The picker has a few keyboard shortcuts worth knowing:

Press / to search, or just start typing a session’s name.

If you haven’t started Claude Code yet, you can resume straight from your shell:

claude --continue                  # reopen the most recent session in this folder
claude --resume                    # open the session picker
claude --resume mule-api-refactor  # resume a named session directly

This is where /rename really pays off. Resuming mule-api-refactor by name beats scrolling through a list of sessions. If you never name a session, Claude Code generates a title from your first prompt, and that title works with --resume too. It’s just a lot harder to remember.

More Claude Code commands worth knowing

Those four cover most of my day, but these are the next ones I’d learn.

/recap: a one-line catch-up

When you come back to a session after stepping away, Claude Code can show a one-line recap of what happened so far. It kicks in on its own once at least three minutes have passed since the last turn while your terminal is out of focus, as long as the session has at least three turns. You can also run /recap to get one on demand. To turn the automatic ones off, open /config and turn off Session recap.

The built-in recap is capped at 400 characters, so it’s a quick reminder, not a full report. When I need more (the goal, what’s blocked on me, and what’s next), I use my recap skills instead.

/branch: try a different direction

/branch makes a copy of the conversation at this point and switches you into it, so you can try a different approach without losing the path you were on. Give the branch a name that describes the experiment:

/branch try-dataweave-instead

The original conversation stays untouched, and you can return to it any time with /resume. From your shell, claude --continue --fork-session resumes your most recent session as a new copy instead.

/rewind: undo Claude’s changes

Took a wrong turn? Run /rewind, or press Esc twice on an empty prompt, to open the rewind menu. Pick one of the prompts you sent earlier, then choose what to roll back:

• Restore code and conversation: go back to that point completely.
• Restore conversation: rewind the chat but keep the current code.
• Restore code: undo the file changes but keep the chat.
• Summarize from here or Summarize up to here: compress part of the conversation to free up context.

/clear, /compact, and /context: manage a long session

These three help when a session gets long:

• /clear starts a new conversation with an empty context. The old one isn’t deleted, so you can still /resume it. Pass a name, like /clear release-prep, to label the conversation you’re leaving so it’s easy to find in the picker.
• /compact keeps the same conversation going but summarizes it to free up space. You can add instructions for the summary, like /compact focus on the API changes.
• /context shows what’s filling your context window as a colored grid, with suggestions for what’s taking up the most space.

/copy and /export: get the output out

• /copy copies Claude’s last response to your clipboard. If the response has code blocks, you get a picker to grab just the block you need. /copy 2 copies the second-to-last response.
• /export saves the whole conversation as plain text. Add a filename, like /export notes.txt, to write it straight to a file.

Quick reference

Here’s every command from this post in one place:

Wrapping up

None of these commands are flashy, but together they take the friction out of working with several Claude sessions at once. You name and color sessions so you never type into the wrong one, ask quick questions without derailing the work, and get back to any conversation by name. Each one takes five seconds, and those seconds add up fast.

Here’s where to go next:

• Open a session and run /rename and /color right now. Seriously, it takes five seconds.
• Type / in Claude Code to browse every command available to you, or read the full commands reference.
• Set up sound and desktop alerts with hooks so Claude tells you when a session is done or needs you.

Happy session juggling! :-)