Resuming sessions – where was I?

Friday, 5 pm. Claude and I are in the middle of a migration, the plan is set, half of it is done. Close the terminal, weekend. Monday morning: new terminal, empty context, and I explain everything from scratch again?

No. Claude Code saves every session, and you can simply pick up where you left off.

▶️ The key commands

• claude --continue resumes the most recent session in the current directory.
• claude --resume shows a list of recent sessions to choose from.
• /resume does the same inside a running session.

🏷️ Naming sessions

If you have several topics going at once, the list gets confusing fast. So I give important sessions a name:

• /rename db-migration in the running session
• claude -n db-migration right at startup
• claude --resume db-migration brings it back directly

🌿 Branch off instead of overwriting

Sometimes I want to try something from a given point without changing the original session. That's what claude --continue --fork-session is for, or /branch inside the session. The copy has the full history, the original stays untouched.

A word of caution:

A resumed session brings its full history along, and that takes up context and costs tokens (part 9). For a new task a fresh session is often the better choice. Also: anything that really matters long term doesn't belong in a chat history, but in CLAUDE.md (part 4) or a plan file (part 10).

My rule of thumb:

• Same task, just interrupted? --continue.
• One of several construction sites? Name it and --resume <name>.
• New task? Fresh session.