Claude Code Basics — The Menu, Decoded (lesson deck)

Claude Code Basics · good to know

The menu, decoded

Open Claude's menu and you'll see a row of buttons and toggles. Here's what each one actually does — in plain English. A few you've already met in earlier lessons.

No more mystery buttons.

A friendly robot explaining a menu of controls

The three you'll actually reach for

Your everyday controls

📄

Mention file (@) — point Claude at a file instead of pasting it. Type @, pick a file, ask: "what does this do?" or "fix the bug in this." (Lesson 2.4)

🎛️

Effort — how hard it thinks: low = fast & cheap, high = the balance (default), max = slow & deep. Set it with /effort. (Lesson 3.3)

⏪

Rewind — undo the whole session: /rewind (or press Esc twice), then restore the code, the chat, or both. (Lesson 1.3)

Two more — good to know

Under the hood

🧠

Thinking — see Claude's reasoning before the answer (the faint grey text). Press Ctrl+O to expand it, Option+T to toggle it off. On by default.

🔁

Switch model when flagged — a safety net: if a request ever gets declined, it quietly retries on a backup model so you still get an answer. Leave it on — it only fires on the rare flag.

Now you know every button.

Most days you'll only touch the first three — the rest just work in the background.