How to use Claude Code like you’ve used it for a year

I’ve been using Claude Code for almost a year.

Most tutorials teach you how to start. They do not teach you how to stop Claude from slowly getting worse inside a long session.

That is where the real tricks are, a few examples:

• /compact can drop the wrong memory.
• /clear can be better than correction.
• Plan mode saves you from confident bad solutions.
• Subagents are not only for parallel work. They protect your main context.
• Hooks beat memory when something must always happen.
• “Should work” is not verification.

These are the things you usually learn after burning thousands of tokens and cleaning up enough messy code.

I wrote down the full list of Claude Code patterns I wish I had known earlier.

Link: https://codeaholicguy.com/2026/05/20/claude-code-guide-how-to-use-claude-code-like-youve-used-it-for-a-year/