Ctrl+C Cleared the Draft. Press Up to Get It Back.

At a glance

• Claude Code v2.1.288 and later can restore a draft you cleared with one idle Ctrl+C: with the prompt empty, press Up, and the draft comes back, including pasted text and images.
• The npm latest channel already has that recovery, while stable is still on a build that does not, so leave stable fleets alone until policy moves them.
• Ctrl+S is the intentional stash, and Esc Esc with text in the box clears to history. Do not mix those with the Ctrl+C then Up path.

You are midway through a long prompt, maybe with a pasted stack trace or a screenshot chip, and you hit Ctrl+C out of habit. In the interactive terminal, when nothing is running, the first Ctrl+C clears the prompt. The second Ctrl+C within the exit window quits Claude Code. Before v2.1.288 that clear often felt like the draft was gone, so people retyped the prompt or dug through history hoping for a match.

Why it matters

The interactive mode docs still describe Ctrl+C as interrupt or clear, and they describe Up as command history once the cursor is on the first visual row. What v2.1.288 adds is the explicit recovery: after a Ctrl+C clear, Up on the empty prompt restores that draft, pastes and images included. Losing a drafted prompt wastes the turn you were about to send, and pasted content is the expensive part to reconstruct. The recovery is one keystroke, not a settings edit, and it is easy to confuse with nearby shortcuts that do different jobs.

How to recover a Ctrl+C draft

This tip is for the Claude Code interactive terminal. The Desktop Code tab documents its own shortcuts and says the terminal interactive mode shortcuts do not apply there, so do not expect this Ctrl+C then Up path in Desktop.

1. Run claude --version and confirm it prints v2.1.288 or later. On 6 October 2026 latest and next are v2.1.291. If you are on stable at v2.1.285, install latest (or pin v2.1.291) for this recovery.
2. Start a normal interactive session.
3. Type a short unique phrase, paste a multi-line block (or paste an image if your terminal supports it), and leave the prompt filled.
4. Press Ctrl+C once while nothing is running. The prompt should clear. Do not press Ctrl+C a second time, or you start the exit confirm.
5. With the prompt still empty, press Up. The cleared draft should return, including the pasted block or image chip.
6. Edit if needed, then Enter to send.

# After one Ctrl+C cleared the prompt (nothing running):
# press Up once on the empty input

# After one Ctrl+C cleared the prompt (nothing running):
# press Up once on the empty input

We did not run a signed-in interactive check this afternoon, so treat steps 4 and 5 as a test of your own.

Gotchas

• Ctrl+S is the intentional stash. With text in the input it stashes and clears. Pressed again on an empty prompt it restores the stash, cursor position, pasted content, and input mode (including a stashed ! shell command). Use this when you mean to clear the box and come back.
• Esc Esc with text in the box clears the draft and saves it to history so Up can recall it. That is a deliberate clear-to-history path, not the Ctrl+C recovery.
• Esc Esc on an empty prompt starts a different flow. Do not use that path for draft recovery.
• Up while the prompt still has text spanning more than one visual row moves the cursor first. Only after the cursor is on the first visual row does Up walk history.
• The recovery is documented in the v2.1.288 release notes. The interactive mode page documents Ctrl+C clear, Up history, Ctrl+S stash, and Esc Esc draft save, and it does not yet spell out the Ctrl+C then Up sentence in the same words as the changelog, so treat the release note as the floor for the new behavior.
• A second Ctrl+C still exits. npm stable at v2.1.285 does not include v2.1.288, so leave stable fleets alone until your policy moves that channel.

Recommended AI prompt

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

I use Claude Code in the interactive terminal and keep losing a drafted prompt when I hit Ctrl+C by accident. Explain the v2.1.288 recovery where, after one Ctrl+C clears the prompt while nothing is running, pressing Up on the empty prompt restores the draft including pasted text and images. Give me a two-minute checklist that also separates Ctrl+S stash, Esc Esc with text (clear to history), and Esc Esc on an empty prompt (a different flow, not this recovery). Reminder that this is a terminal interactive shortcut and Desktop Code tab shortcuts are different. Ask for the output of claude --version if you are unsure whether I am on v2.1.288 or later, and note that on 6 October 2026 npm stable is still v2.1.285 while latest is v2.1.291. Do not invent keybindings.