Work rarely finishes in one sitting. Claude Code lets you leave a session and come back to it later with full context, straight from the command line.
Continue the latest session
The fastest option is -c. It picks up the most recent session in the current project, with all of its history intact.
claude -c
This is what you want when you close your terminal, grab a coffee, and come back to keep going. No need to remember an ID; it just continues where you were.
Resume a specific session
When you have several sessions and want a particular one, use -r with the session ID and a prompt.
claude -r <id> "keep going with the refactor we started"
This targets one session by name rather than assuming the latest. It is the right choice when you jump between tasks and each one lives in its own session.
In-session resuming
Inside an interactive session you also have /resume, which lets you switch to an earlier conversation without leaving Claude. From the shell, -c and -r do the same job before the session even starts.
When to use which
Reach for -c for the common case: one project, one train of thought, picked up again. Reach for -r <id> when you keep multiple threads and need to land on a specific one. Both restore context so you are not re-explaining what you already told Claude, which keeps long-running work moving instead of starting over each day.
Comments
Be the first to comment.