Built-in slash commands and the keyboard habits that make a session fast

A tour of the commands that ship in the box, the four steering keys you will use every run, and the decision you make constantly: clear versus compact, plus how to spot when compaction silently drops the context you were relying on. Episode page & show notes Try a walking desk - stay healthy & sharp while you learn & code Episode three of the OCDevel Claude Code arc, and the first one that's purely about speed. You can already drive a session from episodes one and two. This one makes you fast: the commands that ship in the box, and the keyboard moves you stop thinking about. What we cover: The reframe. On the 2.1 line, custom slash commands have been merged into skills, so the / menu is now one surface mixing built-in commands, bundled skills and workflows, your own skills, plugin commands, and MCP prompts. Type / to see exactly what your install has, since a command is only recognized at the start of a message and availability varies by plan and platform. See the commands reference. The catalog, grouped by when you reach for it — setup (/init, /memory, /config), steering (/model, /effort, /plan, /context), review (/diff, /code-review, /review, /security-review, /simplify), the between-sessions family (/clear, /resume and its alias /continue, /branch, /rename, /export), recovery (/rewind, /doctor), and cost (/usage, aka /cost). The everyday decision: /clear vs /compact. Clear starts a fresh conversation (the old one parks in /resume); compact keeps the thread and replaces verbatim history with a steerable summary. The rule: clear for unrelated work, compact to keep going. Details in exploring the context window and managing costs. The pitfall: silent context loss. Auto-compaction keeps intent and key snippets but drops full tool outputs and intermediate reasoning, and path-scoped rules are lost until a matching file is read again. How to recognize the drift and stay ahead of it with /context and focused compaction. The safety net and its blind spots. /rewind (or double-Escape) restores code and conversation, but bash side effects aren't tracked. Checkpoints are local undo; git is permanent history. See checkpointing. The keyboard. The four steering keys (Escape to interrupt, double-Escape to rewind, Shift+Tab for modes, Ctrl+C), history recall with Ctrl+R, the fast-input symbols (@ files, ! shell, # memory, / commands), plus /btw for a tool-less side question. Reference: interactive mode. Recency note for mid-2026: /vim moved into /config → Editor mode (removed in 2.1.92), /cost is now an alias for /usage, and the auto-compact threshold is version-dependent. Verify against /help in your own install. Next episode: writing your own custom slash commands.