Claude Code Checkpoints

This is something I really wish was just built-in to Claude Code. I want it built in because I don't want to have to think about it beforehand. I should be able to jump back in conversation history and have the state of the code jump back with me, so it's restored to the same state it originally was at that point in the conversation.

(There does also need to be a way to jump back in the conversation history without reverting the code, there are times that is useful too!)

This was a pain point in coming from Aider to CC. How to have diffs of the changes once CC has done the changes? Having git commits done the way Aider does it would have saved me a lot of time.

Cursor has had this for a long time. One of the reasons I don’t switch away.

Hi, the developer here. Already thinking about a way to add it as a background task that can communicate with multiple instances at once. As long as its part of CLAUDE.md, every new project would have it automatically included. Not part of Claude Code, but a good way closer?

You can prompt claude code to do that, or use hooks. You can run lint/test/commit automatically on agent stop.

Cline gives you the ability to jump back to any point in the task. The three options are "Restore task", "restore files" and "restore task and files"

A common experience with these tools is that if you realize you want to change the direction you're heading, it's better to jump back to that point in the work and redo it than it is to try to redirect the tool from where you are. Here's a great post about it on the Cline blog

https://cline.bot/blog/how-i-learned-to-stop-course-correcti...

Yes, but the convenience of aider’s /undo might take quite some work to replicate.

Gemini cli already got this, it's disabled by default.

Ref: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/main/docs/c...

Github Copilot in vscode can do that and also has the Claude models available

if only gemini cli could edit files without getting stuck in an infinite loop

The claude models are just a part of Claude code. I've worked with both copilot with the Claude models and Claude code itself. Claude code is way more capable, and has a greater likelihood of successfully completing a task.

A few weeks ago I asked gemini cli to do something pretty simple and it ran for like 12 minutes and then failed with an exception. Haven't tried it again since.

You can press ESC-ESC in Claude code to open the conversation history view and go back to a previous point in the conversation. It doesn't restore code, which is still a miss, but it is built in and useful!

I asked it go modify a maven pom.xml to support grpc. forgot about it and blew through my usage.

Actually, the ability to retain the current version when jumping back in conversation history is extremely useful for one reason: trimming context. For example I could work on adding a feature X, which will add some context. Then I rewind and add feature Y, etc. This helps delay compaction.

I actually don’t want it to restore code when I jump back. I jump back just to clear context and delay compacting.

Yes, as I said there needs to be a way to jump back without rolling back the code as well!

You can. There is a slash command to move back to a prior point in the conversation. On mobile rn, but I know the is command exists as I’ve used it before.