9. Sessions and the Interactive Loop (Steering Claude Code in the Terminal)

<p>In Episode 9 of <strong>Beyond Prompting</strong>, we enter Part IV of our journey and step directly into the terminal with <strong>Claude Code</strong>. Author Sho Shimoda breaks down how Claude Code operates as an autonomous CLI agent rather than a passive text generator, working directly inside your repository. In this episode, we cover:</p><ul><ul><li><strong>Getting it Running:</strong> Installing Claude Code via the native installer or @anthropic-ai/claude-code, running claude doctor to verify setup, and establishing scoped working directories.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>The Interactive Loop (Gather, Act, Verify):</strong> How Claude Code gathers context, executes file or shell actions, and autonomously verifies its work against test suites and diagnostics to close the loop.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Sessions as Units of Work:</strong> Managing persistent transcripts stored on disk under ~/.claude/projects/, resuming past work with claude --continue or --resume, and branching or forking conversation histories using /branch and /fork.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Steering Over Restarting:</strong> Utilizing mid-turn corrections, rewinding checkpoints via /rewind or Esc Esc, compacting context with /compact, and knowing when to use /clear for new subjects.</li></ul></ul><p><em>(Note for listeners: This episode covers Chapter 9 of Sho Shimoda&#39;s book </em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HJKBWKVQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer"><strong>RUNNING CLAUDE: The Operator’s Guide to Chat, Cowork and Claude Code</strong></a><em>, available on Amazon as the successor book to </em><strong>Master Claude: Chat, Cowork and Code</strong><em>).</em></p>