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Fresh Context Is Your Best Context

Start new sessions per task, not per day. Performance degrades as context grows — Claude starts forgetting earlier decisions, repeating itself, and losing track of the goal. One task, one session. Finish, hand off, start clean.

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The Handoff Pattern

Before ending a session, write a HANDOFF.md with everything the next agent needs: 
# Handoff: [Task Name]

## Goal
What we're trying to accomplish.

## Current Progress
- [x] Step 1 completed
- [x] Step 2 completed
- [ ] Step 3 in progress

## What Worked
- Approach A solved the auth issue
- Using mock data for testing was faster

## What Didn't
- Approach B caused circular imports
- The old migration path is broken

## Next Steps
1. Finish Step 3
2. Write integration tests
3. Update the API docs
Feed the path to the next agent as the first message: "Read HANDOFF.md and continue from where the last session left off."

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Plan Mode Handoff

A lighter-weight alternative when you don’t need a full HANDOFF.md (see the official interactive mode docs for all session commands):
  1. Enter plan mode with /plan or Shift+Tab
  2. Ask Claude to gather everything the next agent needs — decisions made, files changed, what’s left
  3. Select Option 1: “Yes, clear context and auto-accept edits”
  4. The new session starts clean with only the plan as context
This is faster than writing a HANDOFF.md manually but gives you less control over what carries forward.

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Forking

When you want to explore a branch without losing your current session:
  • Mid-conversation: /fork creates a copy of the current session you can take in a different direction
  • From terminal: claude --fork-session with --resume or --continue to branch from a previous session
Useful for: “What if we tried approach B instead?” without abandoning approach A.

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When to Compact vs. When to Start Fresh

SituationAction
Minor pivot within the same task/compact and continue
Finished one task, starting anotherNew session
Context feels degraded (repetition, forgetting)New session with HANDOFF.md
Exploring an alternative approach/fork
Handoff skill — For a structured handoff workflow, install the handoff skill: npx skills add ykdojo/claude-code-tips@handoff
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