Slash commands
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Slash commands
2:07 · spoken companion to this lesson
Most of what you type to Claude is plain English. A handful of things are not requests at all — they are switches you flip on the session itself. Those start with /.
See them all
Type a single / and a list appears. Or ask for it explicitly:
/helpThe list grows over time and depends on your setup, so /help is always the honest source of truth. Below are the ones worth knowing on day one.
The seven that matter
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/clear | Start a new conversation with empty context |
/compact | Summarize the conversation to free up room, and keep going |
/rewind | Open the undo menu (same as Esc Esc on an empty input) |
/help | Show help and the available commands |
/model | Switch which Claude model is active |
/init | Write a CLAUDE.md guide so Claude understands this project |
/exit | Leave Claude |
You already know four of them. That is the point — there is not much to learn here.
/init is the one people miss
Run it once in any project you will come back to:
/initClaude reads through your folder and writes a CLAUDE.md file describing what the project is and how it is organised. From then on, it reads that file at the start of every session in this folder.
The payoff is that you stop re-explaining your own project. In a folder with one HTML file the gain is small. In a real project it is the difference between Claude guessing your conventions and knowing them.
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@file and @directory