When we move devs to Claude Code, I usually give them a quick “here’s what’s good to know about this tool” rundown. After a few rounds of that, a handful of commands keep coming up as “huh, didn’t know that.”

Here’s my go-to list. Note: I use the terminal, not the VS Code extension, so not everything below is accessible from there as far as I know.

Map a shortcut for new terminals

In VS Code, map the “Terminal: Create Terminal in Editor Area” action to a keyboard shortcut so you can spin up a new Claude Code session without touching the mouse. I have mine on Ctrl + Alt + T.

Stop the terminal from swallowing your shortcuts

With a terminal focused, Ctrl + B should toggle VS Code’s sidebar, but the shell running inside the terminal grabs the keypress first and VS Code never sees it. Add workbench.action.toggleSidebarVisibility to terminal.integrated.commandsToSkipShell in your settings.json and VS Code handles the shortcut itself instead of forwarding it to the shell:

"terminal.integrated.commandsToSkipShell": [
    "workbench.action.zoomIn",
    "workbench.action.zoomOut",
    "workbench.action.toggleSidebarVisibility"
]

/tui fullscreen

Cleans up the terminal GUI and removes the flicker you get on every redraw.

Porting agents isn’t a copy-paste

You can’t port agents directly to Claude Code because the tool names are different from Copilot’s. Ask the AI for help translating them, I’ve got a whole separate post on this one alone: “Copilot is agent-first, Claude Code is skill-first”.

/doctor

Lets the AI analyze your agents, skills, and instructions. Quite useful right after you’ve ported something over and want to know what can be improved.

/model opusplan

Opus for planning, Sonnet for execution, switched automatically as you move between the two. This option isn’t selectable through the UI, you have to set it with the command.

/advisor

When Sonnet gets stuck, it can reach out to Opus or Fable on its own for a second opinion.

/rewind

Undoes changes and resets the state and conversation back to a previous prompt. Cheaper than starting a whole new session when a change went sideways.

Left arrow key

Gets you to the overview of all sessions. I prefer separate terminal windows per session myself, but some people like having this single view instead.

Do you have any tiny tips of your own that help you work with Claude Code? I’d genuinely like to hear them.