First Session Walkthrough

A complete walkthrough of your first coding session with Claude Code Setup.

Start Your Session

1. Open Claude Code in your project

cd your-project
claude

2. Run /catchup

If this is your first session after /init-project, /catchup will:

• Read your project’s CLAUDE.md
• Load coding standards for your tech stack
• Show you what’s next

You: /catchup
Claude: Project: Your Project
        Tech Stack: Python, FastAPI
        No recent changes (new project)
        Next step: Start with the first task

Work on Your Task

3. Tell Claude what you want to build

You: Let's implement user authentication with JWT

Claude will:

• Read relevant files to understand the codebase
• Load Python coding standards (from your tech stack)
• Implement the feature following your project’s patterns

4. Track important decisions

When Claude makes a significant decision:

You: Add that to the Records table - why we chose JWT over sessions

This creates a permanent record that survives /clear.

End Your Session

5. Watch context usage

Your status line shows:

Ctx: 75% | Model: opus | Branch: main

At ~80%, it’s time to wrap up.

6. Run /wrapup

You: /wrapup
Claude: Updated CLAUDE.md:
        - JWT auth: Done
        - Added Record 001 for auth decision
        Committed changes.

7. Clear context

/clear

Next Session

8. Resume with /catchup

You: /catchup
Claude: Recent changes:
        - Added JWT authentication
        - Record 001: Auth decision
        Next step: Add password reset

You’re back where you left off, with full context of what was decided and why.

Tips

• Don’t wait until context is 100% - /wrapup at 80%
• Add decisions to Records as you make them, not later
• Use /todo to track tasks that come up during work