/btw (By The Way)

/btw (by the way) lets you ask separate questions without polluting the current conversation context.

Why is this useful?

While working on complex tasks in Claude Code, there are moments when you suddenly want to ask about something else. For example:

• "I'm in the middle of refactoring, but by the way, what's Ruby's freeze method?"

• "I'm debugging, but by the way, I want to check how to use git stash"

• "I'm implementing something, but by the way, check this gem's version"

Until now, asking in the same conversation would pollute the current task's context with a different topic, causing confusion when Claude returns to the original work.

In IDEs like Cursor, you could open a separate AI chat window for similar purposes, but /btw brings this feature natively to Claude Code.

Usage

/btw What's Ruby's freeze method?

That's it. A side conversation starts without affecting the main conversation context.

Key Points

• Doesn't consume the main conversation's context window

• Seamlessly return to main work when side conversation ends

• Perfect for quick "let me ask something" questions

• Prevents context pollution during complex work