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Checkpointing

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Checkpointing

Track, rewind, and summarize Claude's edits and conversation to manage session state.

Claude Code automatically tracks Claude's file edits as you work, allowing you to quickly undo changes and rewind to previous states if anything gets off track.

How checkpoints work

As you work with Claude, checkpointing automatically captures the state of your code before each edit. This safety net lets you pursue ambitious, wide-scale tasks knowing you can always return to a prior code state.

Automatic tracking

Claude Code tracks all changes made by its file editing tools:

Rewind and summarize

Press Esc twice (Esc + Esc) or use the /rewind command to open the rewind menu. A scrollable list shows each of your prompts from the session. Select the point you want to act on, then choose an action:

After restoring the conversation or summarizing, the original prompt from the selected message is restored into the input field so you can re-send or edit it.

Restore vs. summarize

The three restore options revert state: they undo code changes, conversation history, or both. "Summarize from here" works differently:

This is similar to /compact, but targeted: instead of summarizing the entire conversation, you keep early context in full detail and only compress the parts that are using up space. You can type optional instructions to guide what the summary focuses on.

Summarize keeps you in the same session and compresses context. If you want to branch off and try a different approach while preserving the original session intact, use fork instead (claude --continue --fork-session).

Common use cases

Checkpoints are particularly useful when:

Limitations

Bash command changes not tracked

Checkpointing does not track files modified by bash commands. For example, if Claude Code runs:

bash theme={null} rm file.txt mv old.txt new.txt cp source.txt dest.txt

These file modifications cannot be undone through rewind. Only direct file edits made through Claude's file editing tools are tracked.

External changes not tracked

Checkpointing only tracks files that have been edited within the current session. Manual changes you make to files outside of Claude Code and edits from other concurrent sessions are normally not captured, unless they happen to modify the same files as the current session.

Not a replacement for version control

Checkpoints are designed for quick, session-level recovery. For permanent version history and collaboration:

See also