Session Management

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.

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."

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):

Enter plan mode with /plan or Shift+Tab
Ask Claude to gather everything the next agent needs — decisions made, files changed, what’s left
Select Option 1: “Yes, clear context and auto-accept edits”
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.

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.

When to Compact vs. When to Start Fresh

Situation	Action
Minor pivot within the same task	`/compact` and continue
Finished one task, starting another	New 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

Daily Workflow

Autonomous Work

Multi-Agent

Operations

Fresh Context Is Your Best Context

The Handoff Pattern

Plan Mode Handoff

Forking

When to Compact vs. When to Start Fresh

​Fresh Context Is Your Best Context

​The Handoff Pattern

​Plan Mode Handoff

​Forking

​When to Compact vs. When to Start Fresh

Fresh Context Is Your Best Context

The Handoff Pattern

Plan Mode Handoff

Forking

When to Compact vs. When to Start Fresh