¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

A brain dump as of Oct 1st, 2025 of my head, all things Claude Code.

Keyboard shortcuts #

• Shift+Tab to cycle through: “default” -> “⏵⏵ accept edits on” -> “⏸ plan mode on” — “⏵⏵ Accept edits on” is a comfortable mode to be on by default, especially when paired with git commits as checkpoints. — A well-curated tool whitelist (c.f. ~/.claude/settings.json) can further enhance this mode. — “⏵⏵ Accept edits on” is not the same as --dangerously-skip-permissions:

Bypass all permission checks. Recommended only for sandboxes with no internet access.

• Tab to toggle “Thinking on” / “Thinking off” — This is a brand new feature in Claude Code 2.0, just released this week. Hence I haven’t used it so far. Toggling the plan mode is typically enough for my needs.
• Esc Esc to clear input / /rewind to a previous checkpoint — I prefer to “manually steer / tune” the LLM. Learn from past mistakes!
• Ctrl-r to search previous prompts – similarly to bash / zsh shell history
• ! for shell mode e.g. ! ls or ! git commit -a -m "msg". Good for one-offs. — Alternatively, simply open a new shell tab / split / window. — Alternatively, suspend Claude with Ctrl-z:

Claude Code has been suspended. Run `fg` to bring Claude Code back.
Note: ctrl + z now suspends Claude Code, ctrl + _ undoes input.
[1]  + 78756 suspended (signal)  claude

• / for commands – TAB completion is available.
• @ for file paths e.g. @README.md or @.env – TAB completion is supported — Use @ to provide targeted context in prompts, for example: Upgrade @main.go to incorporate logging. Follow a pattern similar to @vendor/main.go. Update @README.md afterwards
• # to memorize (a.k.a. “add to memory”) — I don’t use this shortcut much. Instead, prefer editing CLAUDE.md directly for pristine, per-repo settings. This is comparable to having a local, per git repo .gitignore versus a ~/.gitignore_global that affects all repositories. — Project memory lives in CLAUDE.md, user memory lives in ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md.
• Ctrl-o for verbose output
• Ctrl-t to show TODOs
• Shift+Enter for newline (\n); pre-requisite: /terminal-setup
• Emacs / readline keybindings generally work for text navigation: C-a, C-e, C-b, C-f, C-u, C-p, C-n, C-w. There’s also a vim mode that can be toggled with /vim.
• Gripe: Ctrl-l does not clear the screen. And neither does Esc Esc. Surely someone has already filed a feature request for this? There’s a /clear command, but it is meant to clear history and free up context, which is totally different.
• Ctrl-_ to undo. I prefer C-w.
• Gripe: It hard-codes mentioning “bash” in various places, instead of “shell”. bash is not the only POSIX shell out there. Heck, there’s even a /bashes command to list and manage background tasks.
• Esc to interrupt (think of C-g on Emacs).

Most of the above reference can be pulled up with:

• ? for help

A few handy comments not previously mentioned:

• /cost: show total cost + duration of the current session — See also: ccusage
• /export: copy the current conversation to the clipboard, or export it to a file
• /init: to bootstrap and scaffold / populate CLAUDE.md
• /mcp to manage MCP servers
• /resume: resume a (previous) conversation. — Alternatively, launch claude with --resume in the desired CWD.

Settings #

My ~/.claude/settings.json at the time of this post:

{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY": "0"
  },
  "permissions": {
    "allow": [
      "Bash(ansible-doc:*)",
      "Bash(command -v:*)",
      "Bash(fd:*)",
      "Bash(find:*)",
      "Bash(gh pr diff:*)",
      "Bash(gh pr list:*)",
      "Bash(gh pr review-comment list:*)",
      "Bash(gh pr view:*)",
      "Bash(grep:*)",
      "Bash(hadolint:*)",
      "Bash(helm template:*)",
      "Bash(ls:*)",
      "Bash(rg:*)",
      "Bash(yamllint:*)"
    ]
  },
  "statusLine": {
    "type": "command",
    "command": "bash ~/.claude/statusline.sh"
  },
  "alwaysThinkingEnabled": false
}%

• no telemetry (privacy!)
• allow a couple of often used tools (utilities), especially read-only ones
• add a simple status line; originally scaffolded with /statusline
• do not always think (it’s slow & expensive!)

settings.json and statusline.sh are both in my dotfiles.