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Rajesh Royal
Rajesh Royal

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Named Sessions: Your Git Branches Have Names — Why Shouldn't Your Claude Sessions?

#tutorial #claudecode #productivity #beginners

Stop losing context. Start naming your sessions like the organized developer you pretend to be.

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If you've ever found yourself scrolling through a sea of anonymous Claude sessions, desperately trying to remember which one had that brilliant API refactoring discussion, this feature is about to change your life.

We've all been there. You're deep in a complex migration, Claude is helping you navigate the treacherous waters of legacy code, and then... life happens. A meeting. A Slack ping. Your cat demands attention. When you return, you're staring at a list of sessions that might as well be labeled "Session 1," "Session 2," and "I Have No Idea What This Was."

Today, we're talking about Named Sessions — a deceptively simple feature that brings the organizational power of git branches to your Claude Code workflow.

The Problem

Context switching is the silent killer of developer productivity. Studies suggest it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully regain focus after an interruption. But here's what those studies don't account for: the additional time spent trying to find where you left off.

With Claude Code, this problem compounds. You might have:

  • A session for debugging that authentication issue
  • Another for planning your new microservice architecture
  • One more for that "quick refactor" that turned into a rabbit hole
  • And three more you started but can't remember why

Without named sessions, you're playing Russian roulette with your context. You click on a session, hope it's the right one, and waste precious mental energy reconstructing what you were doing.

The Solution

Claude Code now lets you name your sessions with simple, intuitive commands that feel as natural as naming a git branch.

How to Use It

Naming your current session:

/rename api-migration
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That's it. Your current session is now called "api-migration." No modal dialogs. No settings menus. Just a slash command and you're done.

Resuming a named session:

From within Claude Code:

/resume api-migration
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Or from your terminal:

claude --resume api-migration
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The terminal option is particularly powerful. Imagine your workflow:

# Morning: Pick up where you left off on the API migration
claude --resume api-migration

# After lunch: Switch to that auth bug
claude --resume auth-debug

# End of day: Start fresh on a new feature
claude
/rename user-dashboard-v2
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Naming Conventions That Work

Just like git branches, good session names are:

  • Descriptive: refactor-payment-service beats stuff
  • Consistent: Pick a pattern and stick to it
  • Scannable: You should know what it is at a glance

Some patterns that work well:

feature-user-auth
bugfix-memory-leak
explore-graphql-options
review-pr-1234
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Pro Tips

🎯 Tip 1: Name sessions immediately. The moment you realize a conversation is going somewhere important, hit /rename. Future you will be grateful.

🎯 Tip 2: Use project prefixes. Working on multiple projects? Try projectname-feature format: acme-api-refactor, acme-frontend-tests.

🎯 Tip 3: Create a "parking lot" session. Name one session parking-lot for random questions and quick lookups that don't deserve their own context.

🎯 Tip 4: Combine with shell aliases. Add this to your .zshrc or .bashrc:

alias capi="claude --resume api-migration"
alias cauth="claude --resume auth-debug"
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Now you can jump into specific contexts with three keystrokes.

Real-World Use Case

Let me paint you a picture. Sarah is a senior engineer at a fintech startup. She's simultaneously:

  1. Leading a migration from REST to GraphQL
  2. Debugging a race condition in the payment processor
  3. Mentoring a junior dev on testing best practices

Before named sessions, Sarah's Claude history was chaos. She'd waste 5-10 minutes per context switch just finding the right conversation.

Now, her workflow looks like this:

# 9:00 AM - Deep work on GraphQL migration
claude --resume graphql-migration

# 11:00 AM - Quick sync on the payment bug
claude --resume payment-race-condition

# 2:00 PM - Mentoring session
claude --resume testing-mentorship

# 4:00 PM - Back to GraphQL with full context
claude --resume graphql-migration
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Each session maintains its full context. Claude remembers the decisions made, the code discussed, the approaches tried and abandoned. Sarah estimates she saves 30+ minutes daily just in context reconstruction.

Conclusion

Named sessions might seem like a small feature, but it's the kind of quality-of-life improvement that compounds over time. Every minute you don't spend hunting for the right conversation is a minute you spend actually coding.

The best part? It's frictionless. Two commands — /rename and /resume — and you're operating like a developer who has their life together.

Tomorrow in Day 12: We're diving into something powerful — controlling how hard Claude thinks before responding. Ever wished you could tell Claude to really chew on a problem? Get ready for Ultrathink. 🧠

Did this save you from session chaos? Follow along for the rest of the 31 Days of Claude Code Features series!

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