Steering Claude Code Through Hours-Long Sessions: Plan Mode, Compact, Rewind, Goals — Transcript

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1. 0:02You can prompt Claude and watch it
2. 0:03finish a quick task, but running a long
3. 0:05one is much harder. Refactoring across a
4. 0:07dozen files or implementing a new
5. 0:09feature can take hours, and if you
6. 0:10aren't steering Claude in the right
7. 0:11direction, it can potentially take
8. 0:13longer. But, there are many ways to help
9. 0:15Claude during these long sessions.
10. 0:18There are two important habits. The
11. 0:20first is to scope the work before Claude
12. 0:22starts. So, if you use plan mode, Claude
13. 0:24will do the research in read-only mode
14. 0:26and hand you a plan.
15. 0:28Once the plan has been provided,
16. 0:29actually read through it. The more
17. 0:31thorough the plan, the less likely that
18. 0:32you're going to have hiccups when Claude
19. 0:34executes. And when it comes to revising
20. 0:36the plan, just ask Claude to add it
21. 0:38where you want. It's much faster to
22. 0:39iterate over a plan than it is to simply
23. 0:42hope for the best. The second habit is
24. 0:44to steer Claude in the right direction.
25. 0:46And here are some ways that you can do
26. 0:47that.
27. 0:49Compact summarizes your conversation and
28. 0:51uses that as a new context while
29. 0:53deleting the old, freeing up your
30. 0:55context window. However, there is a risk
31. 0:57that something important will be
32. 0:59removed, causing Claude to drift in the
33. 1:01wrong direction. So, when you do the
34. 1:02compact command, add in the changes you
35. 1:04want. And adding instructions after the
36. 1:06command tells Claude how to summarize.
37. 1:08So, if you were done debugging a while
38. 1:09ago, but want to just focus on those API
39. 1:11changes, well, here you can do that.
40. 1:15When Claude goes down the wrong path,
41. 1:17you don't have to prompt your way out of
42. 1:19it. Rewind brings you to the last
43. 1:20checkpoint. To open it, double tap
44. 1:22escape on an empty prompt, and you'll
45. 1:24get the rewind menu. Every user prompt
46. 1:27creates a checkpoint that you can revert
47. 1:28back to with different options. One, you
48. 1:31can restore the code, conversation, or
49. 1:33both. Two, summarize from here will
50. 1:35summarize everything after the
51. 1:37checkpoint. Great if you had a side
52. 1:39conversation and just want to free up
53. 1:40some space. And summarize up to here
54. 1:42will summarize everything before the
55. 1:44checkpoint. So, this is great if you
56. 1:46want to summarize a long setup phase,
57. 1:48but keep the implementation parts.
58. 1:51When we talk about steering, we assume
59. 1:53that you are hands-on. If you want
60. 1:55something a little bit more autonomous,
61. 1:57there is the goal and loop.
62. 1:59Goal sets a completion condition. You
63. 2:01describe what done looks like and Claude
64. 2:03keeps working across turns until a fast
65. 2:06evaluator confirms that those conditions
66. 2:07have been met. Instead of just stopping
67. 2:10for the first time it thinks it's
68. 2:11finished. So for example, I could do
69. 2:13slash goal, all tests in source billing
70. 2:15pass and the type checker reports zero
71. 2:17errors. Doing slash goal clear will
72. 2:19cancel it. And one constraint here is
73. 2:21that the evaluator only reads the
74. 2:23transcript, so the condition has to be
75. 2:25checkable from the output that Claude
76. 2:26produces, like the test results that it
77. 2:28ran. Loop runs a prompt on an interval
78. 2:30between turns fixed or self-paced. Use
79. 2:33it to pull something external like a CI
80. 2:35run or a deploy and act when the state
81. 2:37changes. You can press escape to stop
82. 2:39it.
83. 2:41So our steering metaphor assumes one
84. 2:43steering wheel in one car, but when
85. 2:45we're working with multiple agents on
86. 2:47the same code base, we don't want to
87. 2:48have two steering wheels in one car.
88. 2:51Well, that's just unsafe.
89. 2:52This is where work trees come in. It
90. 2:54prevents two or more Claude sessions
91. 2:56from fighting over files in a
92. 2:57repository. This prevents conflicts by
93. 2:59having three independent file trees. On
94. 3:02exit, a clean work tree is auto removed.
95. 3:04A dot work tree include file at the repo
96. 3:06root lists get ignored files to copy
97. 3:08into each work tree, which is useful for
98. 3:11a environment variable file or a local
99. 3:13configuration that you need but don't
100. 3:15want to commit into the version control.
101. 3:23When it comes to handling long Claude
102. 3:24code sessions, scope your work first and
103. 3:26then steer. Direct your compaction so
104. 3:28the summary keeps what matters. Use the
105. 3:30rewind menu to course correct. Set a
106. 3:32goal when you can describe done better
107. 3:33than you can describe the steps and run
108. 3:35parallel work in work trees. Do that and
109. 3:37you can trust a long run without
110. 3:39babysitting it.