Claude Clue #18: Compact, Clear, or Resume: Know Your Options

Claude Code now gives you real tools to manage your conversations, and knowing when to use each one matters. The '/compact' command summarizes your conversation to free up context space—it runs automatically or on demand, and it's essential for longer sessions. But if you're switching tasks and don't want Claude's mind cluttered with irrelevant stuff from earlier, '/clear' wipes the slate without closing your terminal. And my personal favorite recent addition: '/resume' lets you scroll through past conversations and pick up where you left off. No more copying and pasting conversations to keep them alive.

Here's what this looks like in practice: I'll be deep in a debugging session, realize I need to pivot to something unrelated, and just '/clear' instead of spinning up a new window. Or I'll close my laptop for the day, come back tomorrow, hit '/resume', and tell Claude "get me up to speed on where we are." Keep working, start fresh, or resurrect an old thread—you've got options now, and picking the right one keeps things moving.

This started as a message from Roscoe and ended up here, with Claude's help.