Interactive mode

Complete reference for keyboard shortcuts, input modes, and interactive features in Claude Code sessions.

Keyboard shortcuts

General controls

Text editing

Theme and display

Multiline input

Quick commands

Built-in commands

Built-in commands are shortcuts for common actions. The table below covers commonly used commands but not all available options. Type / in Claude Code to see the full list, or type / followed by any letters to filter.

To create your own commands you can invoke with /, see skills.

MCP prompts

MCP servers can expose prompts that appear as commands. These use the format /mcp__<server>__<prompt> and are dynamically discovered from connected servers. See MCP prompts for details.

Vim editor mode

Enable vim-style editing with /vim command or configure permanently via /config.

Mode switching

Navigation (NORMAL mode)

Editing (NORMAL mode)

Text objects (NORMAL mode)

Text objects work with operators like d, c, and y:

Command history

Claude Code maintains command history for the current session:

• History is stored per working directory
• Cleared with /clear command
• Use Up/Down arrows to navigate (see keyboard shortcuts above)
• Note: History expansion (!) is disabled by default

Reverse search with Ctrl+R

Press Ctrl+R to interactively search through your command history:

1. Start search: Press Ctrl+R to activate reverse history search
2. Type query: Enter text to search for in previous commands - the search term will be highlighted in matching results
3. Navigate matches: Press Ctrl+R again to cycle through older matches
4. Accept match:
   • Press Tab or Esc to accept the current match and continue editing
   • Press Enter to accept and execute the command immediately
5. Cancel search:
   • Press Ctrl+C to cancel and restore your original input
   • Press Backspace on empty search to cancel

The search displays matching commands with the search term highlighted, making it easy to find and reuse previous inputs.

Background bash commands

Claude Code supports running bash commands in the background, allowing you to continue working while long-running processes execute.

How backgrounding works

When Claude Code runs a command in the background, it runs the command asynchronously and immediately returns a background task ID. Claude Code can respond to new prompts while the command continues executing in the background.

To run commands in the background, you can either:

• Prompt Claude Code to run a command in the background
• Press Ctrl+B to move a regular Bash tool invocation to the background. (Tmux users must press Ctrl+B twice due to tmux's prefix key.)

Key features:

• Output is buffered and Claude can retrieve it using the TaskOutput tool
• Background tasks have unique IDs for tracking and output retrieval
• Background tasks are automatically cleaned up when Claude Code exits

To disable all background task functionality, set the CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_BACKGROUND_TASKS environment variable to 1. See Environment variables for details.

Common backgrounded commands:

• Build tools (webpack, vite, make)
• Package managers (npm, yarn, pnpm)
• Test runners (jest, pytest)
• Development servers
• Long-running processes (docker, terraform)

Bash mode with ! prefix

Run bash commands directly without going through Claude by prefixing your input with !:

! npm test
! git status
! ls -la

Bash mode:

• Adds the command and its output to the conversation context
• Shows real-time progress and output
• Supports the same Ctrl+B backgrounding for long-running commands
• Does not require Claude to interpret or approve the command
• Supports history-based autocomplete: type a partial command and press Tab to complete from previous ! commands in the current project

This is useful for quick shell operations while maintaining conversation context.

Task list

When working on complex, multi-step work, Claude creates a task list to track progress. Tasks appear in the status area of your terminal with indicators showing what's pending, in progress, or complete.

• Press Ctrl+T to toggle the task list view. The display shows up to 10 tasks at a time
• To see all tasks or clear them, ask Claude directly: "show me all tasks" or "clear all tasks"
• Tasks persist across context compactions, helping Claude stay organized on larger projects
• To share a task list across sessions, set CLAUDE_CODE_TASK_LIST_ID to use a named directory in ~/.claude/tasks/: CLAUDE_CODE_TASK_LIST_ID=my-project claude
• To revert to the previous TODO list, set CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TASKS=false.

See also

• Skills - Custom prompts and workflows
• Checkpointing - Rewind Claude's edits and restore previous states
• CLI reference - Command-line flags and options
• Settings - Configuration options
• Memory management - Managing CLAUDE.md files