Clear the context with /clear

Agents: claude, codex, opencode · On: phone, desktop

/clear starts the agent fresh in this tab. The conversation it was carrying is dropped, along with the transcript on screen. The tab, its folder, its model and its log on disk stay.

Why you would use it

The agent has been going for an hour on something finished and every new question is answered through the old context. Clearing is cheaper than a new tab because the tab keeps its name, colour, folder and settings.

How to use it

1. Type /clear in the box (#draft). The slash menu describes it as Start fresh — clears the conversation and the context.

   

2. Tap the row. /clear takes no argument, so the tap runs it — there is nothing left to send. Typed in full and sent with Enter, it does the same thing.

   

What you see

• The transcript empties and a system line takes its place: cleared — claude starts fresh from here.
• With nothing to clear, a toast: nothing to clear yet.
• While a turn is running it is refused: stop the running turn before clearing the context.
• With no tab open, /clear is not run at all; the send path answers start a thread first.

Limits and known gaps

• Tab does not run it. Tab completes the word to /clear , and the send is yours: /cl plus one press must not be a cleared conversation.
• The tap runs it only when /clear is the whole message. Picked out of the middle of a longer one, it is written in as text, because running it there would empty the box and take the message with it.
• /clear followed by other words is prose, not a command. /clear the build directory is sent to the agent as a message.
• On codex, /compact does not work over this channel; /clear is the way to start the agent fresh. VCode says so if you type /compact on a codex tab.
• On opencode, a session opencode has forgotten fails with session not found … — run /clear to start this tab on a new opencode session. That is what /clear is for there.
• A parked handoff brief is context too, and is dropped with everything else.
• An armed usage-limit retry is cancelled: it would otherwise resume a session that no longer exists and hold the queue until then.
• Nothing is deleted. The thread's append-only log keeps every event; this forgets without deleting. The agent forgets and the screen forgets; the events stay on disk, they are just no longer part of what the tab shows or what the agent is asked about.

Related

• slash-menu — where the command comes from
• vendor-slash-commands — why /compact behaves differently per agent
• auto-compact — shrink the context instead of dropping it
• hand-a-tab-to-another-agent — drop the session but keep the history as a brief
• close-and-reopen-tabs — dropping the tab instead of its context
• thread-state-on-disk — the log a clear does not delete
• resume-a-session-from-disk — starting a tab on a session that already exists