The shortcuts I use every day

When I look over other people's shoulders while they work with Claude Code, I often see the same thing: long explanations where a file is meant, copy and paste from the terminal, and waiting even though Claude has long been heading in the wrong direction.

Yet there's a shortcut for almost everything.

⌨️ Input

• @ in front of a file name pulls the file straight in. @src/auth/login.ts instead of "the login file in the auth folder".
• ! at the start runs a shell command, e.g. ! git status. The output lands right in the conversation, so Claude sees it too.
• \ + Enter or Ctrl+J adds a line break without sending.
• Ctrl+V pastes a screenshot from the clipboard (macOS Terminal; Cmd+V also works in iTerm2).
• Ctrl+R searches your own previous prompts.

🛑 Control

• Esc interrupts Claude immediately. The context stays, and I can correct course right away.
• Esc Esc with an empty prompt opens rewind (part 12).
• Shift+Tab cycles through the modes up to plan mode (part 10).
• Ctrl+B sends a long-running command to the background, and Claude keeps working.

💬 My insider tip: /btw

A quick side question while Claude is working? /btw What was the environment variable for the API again? The answer comes right away and doesn't end up in the conversation history. The context stays clean.

A word of caution:

Not every shortcut works the same in every terminal, especially line breaks and pasting images. On Windows, for example, it's Alt+V instead of Ctrl+V. A few minutes of trying things out in your own terminal pays off.

My rule of thumb:

• Mean a file? @.
• Want to show output? !.
• Claude going the wrong way? Hit Esc right away, don't wait.