Some of the lesser known Claude Code features that are very useful

Question

1. Compact Context

While Claude Code automatically manages context as conversations grow.

But we can manually compact the conversation at logical milestones using /compact.

Example:

/compact Keep the API contract, authentication flow, and database schema.

This preserves the important information while reducing unnecessary context.

1. Denying Access to Files

You don't want to share every file with Claude Code.

Reason?

• File too long -> consumes a lot of tokens

• Contains confidential info

• Not relevant

So in settings.json, you create a deny list

1. Flags

Think of flags as launch-time configuration for Claude Code.

They let you control how Claude behaves for a specific session, for example selecting a model, resuming a conversation, or changing execution behaviour.

For example

--model opus

Use a more capable model for complex tasks.

1. Extended Thinking

For problems requiring multiple reasoning steps, Claude can spend more of its reasoning budget before responding.

It's most useful for architecture decisions, debugging, and complex implementation planning; not every task needs it.

For example:

Investigate why this API intermittently returns 500 errors.

List possible root causes, eliminate unlikely ones and suggest fixes.

1. Resume

Instead of creating a new conversation every time, you can resume an earlier coding session and continue from where you left off.

Just use --resume

1. Hooks

Very useful feature when you want some specific rules to run before or after Claude automatically performs an action.

For example: when a command runs in Claude -> record in log

Basically custom rules that trigger automatically every single time.

This can act like a guardrail that is going to run in the background.

Do share if you know any more lesser known Claude Code features that are useful, will add them to the list.