Tips
Work with GitHub CLI
Claude knows how to use the GitHub CLI to interact with GitHub for creating issues, opening pull requests, reading comments, and more.
Handling Large Inputs
- Don’t paste long, large content in Claude Code
- Do use file-based workflow. Store the input in a file and ask Claude Code to read the file
Turn on macOS Dictation
You can speak to enter the prompts, making it like chatting with a real agent.
Make a Plan Before Implementing
Ask Claude Code to propose a plan and verify the feasibility. You may use prompts like: “propose a few solutions to the XXX issues.”
Give Claude More Context
CLAUDE.md
- CLAUDE.md is a special file that Claude automatically pulls into context when starting a conversation.
- This is the ideal place for documenting how to set up or contribute to the project.
Other methods
- You can use pipe to pass context into Claude Code:
cat foo.txt | claude - Ask Claude to read files or fetch URLs
Key Bindings
- Escape: Press Esc to interrupt at any time
- Double-tap Escape: Jump back to history message
- Shift+Tab: Toggle between auto-accept mode, plan mode, and normal mode
Use Headless Mode
Claude Code has headless mode for non-interactive environments like CI, pre-commit hooks, build scripts, and automation. Use the -p flag with a prompt to enable headless mode, and --output-format stream-json for streaming JSON output.
Examples:
claude -p "<your prompt>" --output-format stream-json --verboseclaude -p "<your prompt>" --output-format json | your_command
Useful Commands
/init: Generate a CLAUDE.md project summary/vim: Toggle between Vim mode and normal editing mode/clear: Use this command between tasks to reset the context window and keep context focused/memory: Open any memory file in your system editor for additional memoryclaude commit: Create a Git commit, co-authored by Claudeclaude -r: Resume the previous conversation