Mid-Turn Question? Ask It on the Side, Not in the Conversation.

At a glance

• Type /btw and a question to ask Claude about the current session without adding the question or the answer to the conversation history.
• It runs while Claude is still working, has no tools, and answers only from what is already in context.
• At 6:06 AM ET on Wednesday 14 October, every npm channel had it: stable at v2.1.287 and latest and next at v2.1.299.

You are 40 minutes into a refactor and Claude is halfway through a long turn. You want to know which config file it read earlier, or why it picked one approach over another. Typed into the main prompt, that question waits behind the turn or lands as a new instruction that every later turn carries. Claude Code has a built-in command for exactly this kind of aside.

Why it matters

A quick question in the main prompt is a real turn. It goes into the history, it can pull Claude off the task it was doing, and it stays in context until you compact or clear.

Per the docs, /btw answers from what is already in the conversation: your messages, Claude's replies, and the tool results it has gathered. The question and answer never enter the conversation history. In the terminal they show up in a dismissible overlay, and the session keeps the side thread in memory until you clear it or exit.

Three documented properties make it safe to use mid-task. First, it works while Claude is busy: the side question runs on its own and sees everything except the reply still being written. Second, it has no tool access, so it can't read files, run commands, or search. If Claude writes out a tool call as text anyway, the answer ends with a note that nothing ran. Third, while the prompt cache is warm, a side question costs little beyond the answer itself.

Later side questions also see your earlier ones, because Claude Code replays the newest 20 side exchanges with each new ask.

How to ask a side question mid-turn

1. Check your build with claude --version. Running bare /btw to reopen the overlay needs v2.1.212 or later, and the Shift+Left and Shift+Right history keys need v2.1.257 or later. Every current npm channel clears both.
2. While Claude works, ask the aside. The example question is our illustration.

/btw which file did you read the database settings from, and why did you skip the second one?

1. Read the answer, then press Space, Enter or Escape to dismiss it. The main turn keeps running the whole time.
2. Use the overlay keys as needed. c copies the answer as raw Markdown. Shift+Left steps back to older answers, and x clears the earlier exchanges.
3. If the answer shows Claude needs to go look something up, press f. That starts a forked subagent that inherits the conversation plus this question and answer, with full tool access, while you stay in the current session. The docs list f for local sessions only and give it no minimum version.
4. To bring back the last answer after dismissing it, run /btw with no question.

To check it yourself, run /context before and after a side question. This check is our inference from the docs saying side questions never enter the conversation history; the docs do not describe it. If it holds, context usage should not grow by the question or the answer.

In the VS Code extension, /btw opens a side panel instead of the overlay. That needs extension v2.1.227 or later.

Gotchas

/btw can only report what is already in context, so it can be confidently wrong about a file Claude never opened. If the question needs fresh facts, fork with f or ask a normal turn instead.

The f fork is the only way to give a side question tools, and it is documented for local sessions only. The docs give it no minimum version, so don't assume an older build has it.

The side thread lives in memory. It is gone when you exit Claude Code, so copy anything worth keeping with c first.

On builds from v2.1.187 through v2.1.256, history uses the plain arrow keys rather than Shift+Left and Shift+Right. Current channels are all past that range.

Recommended AI prompt

Copy this paragraph into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, or whatever AI you use.