Claude Code Shortcuts Cheatsheet

Work faster in the Claude Code terminal

Most people use Claude Code with a fraction of its keyboard shortcuts, which means they type more, interrupt clumsily, and lose context they did not need to lose. This cheatsheet collects the shortcuts and slash commands that matter, grouped by category and searchable, so you can find the one you need and learn the ones you are missing. Search by what you want to do - 'interrupt', 'newline', 'compact' - and copy the whole list to keep beside your terminal.

It is fully client-side. The search and filtering happen in your browser with no network calls. Because bindings differ slightly across terminals and Claude Code versions, always confirm against /help inside your own CLI.

The five shortcuts worth learning first

• Esc - interrupt Claude mid-response. The instant you see it going the wrong way, stop it rather than waiting and paying for output you will discard.
• Shift+Tab - cycle permission modes, including plan mode, where Claude proposes changes without applying them. This is the safety valve for risky work.
• Shift+Enter - add a newline for multi-line prompts. If it does not work in your terminal, run /terminal-setup.
• # at the start of a line - save a memory straight into your CLAUDE.md without leaving the session.
• /compact - summarize a long conversation to reclaim context space instead of losing it to a hard reset.

Slash commands do the heavy lifting

Slash commands are typed commands, not keyboard chords, and they control the session itself. /clear wipes the conversation for a clean start. /compact summarizes a long session to free up context. /model switches between Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku on the fly. /cost shows what the session has spent. /init generates a CLAUDE.md for a new project. /review asks Claude to critique your recent changes. Learning these five or six commands changes how fluidly you can steer a session.

Managing context like a pro

The most common way sessions go bad is context bloat: the conversation grows so long that every turn reloads a mountain of history, which is slow and expensive. Two commands fix this. /compact summarizes the conversation so far and keeps working with far less baggage - use it when a session has been productive but long. /clear starts completely fresh - use it when you are switching to an unrelated task. Knowing which to reach for keeps sessions fast and cheap.

The special-character prefixes

1. Type @ to reference a file by path and attach it to your prompt without copy-pasting its contents.
2. Start a line with # to append a note to your CLAUDE.md memory on the spot.
3. Start a line with ! to run a raw bash command directly from the Claude Code prompt.
4. Paste an image with Ctrl+V to show Claude a screenshot, a design, or an error dialog.
5. Use / at the start of a line to reach every slash command, including your own custom ones.

If a shortcut does not work

Terminals intercept keys differently, so a binding that works in one may not in another - Shift+Enter is the usual culprit. Run /terminal-setup inside Claude Code to configure your terminal, or fall back to the backslash-then-Enter method to insert a newline. Whenever you are unsure what a key does in your exact setup, /help prints the authoritative list for your version. Treat this cheatsheet as the map and /help as the source of truth.