Claude Code productivity tips

Getting started with Claude Code is super simple.

Once you've made yourself familiar with it, you may want to improve your workflow.
Here are a few quick tips that are relevant to most users.

Keyboard Shortcuts

There are lots of keyboard shortcuts Show archive.org snapshot . Here are the most relevant ones.

Insert a Newline

To add a newline without submitting your prompt, use Alt+Enter.
You can configure some terminals to support Shift+Enter through /terminal-setup, but this does not work on the default Gnome Terminal or Terminator.

Switch Model and Effort

Press Alt+P to select models and adjust the thinking effort levels.

Cycle Permission Modes

Press Shift+Tab to cycle through permission modes: Default, auto-accept edits, and plan mode.

Edit in External Editor

Press Ctrl+G to open your current prompt buffer in your default system editor. This allows writing longer/complex prompts more easily.

Stash Prompt

Press Ctrl+S to stash your current draft and clear the input line. This is useful if you want to send something else instead, but don't want to lose your current prompt.
Your stashed message will be restored when sending any other prompt, including commands like /config.

Note

You can also customize keyboard shortcuts Show archive.org snapshot .

Status bar

You may customize the statusline Show archive.org snapshot by using the /statusline command, or by just asking Claude Code to change your status bar.

For example, it's useful to have your status bar reflect current model, effort level, context window usage, and quota usages.

Here is an example of what it can look like:

Fullscreen TUI Mode

By default, Claude Code will print to your terminal buffer and you could scroll up as usual.
However, when resizing your window, you'll potentially mess up output history, and overly long responses will not be fully visible in some cases.

Instead, enable Claude Code's fullscreen mode Show archive.org snapshot to render a more sophisticated Terminal UI.

Type /tui fullscreen within a session to enable.
This will also persist into your configuration. Use /tui default to disable again.

Fullscreen mode some actual benefits:

Enhanced Scrolling

Use the PageUp / PageDown keys or the mouse wheel to scroll through history. (Shift+PageUp/PageDown will no longer work)
When scrolling long responses, your previous prompt will also be teasered at the top. This is helpful when you return to an agent while you were doing something else for a while.

Clean Clipboard Support

Selecting text with the mouse automatically copies it to the clipboard (for pasting via Ctrl+V, not via middle-click).
Multi-line blocks and indentation are also handled correctly. (Which is painful on "classic" terminal mode).
Note that you can disable "copy on select" through /config; selection is still managed well, you just have to press Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Shift+C to copy to clipboard.

Dynamic UI

Prompt, status bar, and task list will still be visible when scrolling.
You can also click tool output items (like "Searched for ...") to expand or collapse them.

Note

See the documentation Show archive.org snapshot for a list of more information and configuration options, like changing scroll speed or how to keep native text selection.

IDE Integration

Claude Code can synchronize with your IDE (e.g. RubyMine or VS Code) to provide a bridge between the chat and your active codebase.
You don't have to use the respective plugin for this. Just open Claude Code in your regular terminal app.

Setup: Use /config set ide <your-ide> or follow the prompts when running /init.

Once integrated, you can highlight blocks of code directly in your IDE, and Claude Code will have context of that selection.

Note

The IDE feature seems to require the Fullscreen TUI mode (see above) to work properly.