Secret Claude Code commands
Claude Code ships 112 built-in commands and most people use about a dozen. These are the 16 worth learning next, grouped by the problem each one solves.
The list that prompted this page had 19 entries. 16 of them are real built-in commands. The other 3 are not commands at all, which is the problem with a list nobody checked: a wrong answer reads exactly like a right one.
So everything below was matched against the Claude Code command reference first. If a command is here, it exists. Its description is the official one.
Ask a question without killing the run
The most expensive habit in Claude Code is stopping a working session to ask something small. You lose the run, and the answer you get costs you the 4 minutes of work you cancelled to ask it.
/btw [question]
Ask the side question and let the work continue. Run it with no question and it shows you the last one, so earlier answers stay reachable.
Official: Ask a side question about the current session without adding to the conversation.
/advisor [model|off]
Hands the hard decision to a second model before Claude commits to an approach, rather than after you have read 200 lines of the wrong one.
Official: Enable or disable the advisor tool, which consults a second model for guidance at key moments during a task.
See what you are spending, then get it back
Context is the budget. Most people never look at it, then wonder why the answers got worse an hour in. These 4 make the budget visible and give you 3 different ways to spend less of it.
/context [all]
Draws the window as a grid, so you can see what is filling it instead of guessing.
Official: Visualize current context usage as a colored grid.
/clear [name]
The cheapest accuracy fix there is. Old context does not sit there harmlessly, it competes with the task in front of you.
Official: Start a new conversation with empty context.
/effort [level|auto|status]
Turn the reasoning down for work that does not need it. Most sessions do not need max on every turn.
Official: Set the effort level: low to xhigh, max, ultracode, or auto; status prints it.
/model [model]
The other half of the same lever, and it sticks as your default for new sessions.
Official: Switch the AI model and save it as your default for new sessions.
Go backwards, which is the one thing chat cannot do
A chat window is a one way street. These 3 are the exits: undo a conversation, find one from last week, and give the current one a name you will recognise.
/rewind
Takes the conversation and the code back to an earlier point. Its aliases are /checkpoint and /undo, which is what most people search for first.
Official: Rewind the conversation and/or code to a previous point, or summarize from a selected message.
/resume [session]
Reopen a session by id or name, or pick from the list. The work you did on Tuesday is not gone.
Official: Resume a conversation by ID or name, or open the session picker.
/rename [name]
Name the session and the name shows on the prompt bar. This is what makes /resume usable a week later.
Official: Rename the current session and show the name on the prompt bar.
Work that keeps going when you do not
3 different answers to the same question, which is what happens to a task once you close the laptop.
/loop [interval] [prompt]
Repeats a task while the session stays open, on an interval you set.
Official: Skill.
/schedule [description]
Moves the task off your machine entirely. It runs in the cloud on a cron, whether or not your terminal is open.
Official: Create, update, list, or run routines, which execute in the cloud.
/remote-control
Makes the running session reachable from claude.ai, so you can steer it from a phone.
Official: Make this session available for Remote Control from claude.ai.
Read your own history back
Claude Code has been keeping records of how you work. Almost nobody reads them. These 3 do.
/insights
An HTML report on your recent sessions: which projects, how you use it, and where things go wrong.
Official: Generate an HTML report analyzing your recent sessions on this machine: which projects you work in, how you use Claude Code, where things go wrong, and features to try.
/team-onboarding
Turns that same history into a guide for somebody joining. The onboarding doc writes itself from what you already did.
Official: Generate a team onboarding guide from your Claude Code usage history.
/fewer-permission-prompts
Reads your transcripts for the read-only calls you keep approving, then writes the allowlist so you stop approving them.
Official: Skill.
The 2 that change the terminal itself
Small, and you will notice them every day.
/statusline
Puts what you care about on the prompt bar. Context left and spend are the 2 most people choose.
Official: Configure Claude Code's status line.
/chrome
The settings for Claude in Chrome. This is the one the article called an extension rather than a command.
Official: Configure Claude in Chrome settings
3 things on that list that are not commands
Naming them matters, because each one sends somebody to a prompt to type something that does nothing, and they conclude the tool is broken rather than the list.
/skill-creator
A skill, not a built-in. You install it before you can run it, and it does not appear in the command reference.
/caveman
Also a skill, and an open-source one. Worth installing, but it ships with nothing.
ULTRATHINK
A word you type in a prompt, not a command. The built-in that sets reasoning depth is /effort.
The other 96
16 is where to start, not where it ends. The full reference is on all Claude Code commands, every one of them read from the same source as this page.