Glossary
Claude Code (and Anthropic’s docs) throw around a handful of terms that don’t mean what you’d guess from the name alone. Here’s the short version of each.
Agent Skill
Section titled “Agent Skill”A folder of instructions (SKILL.md plus optional supporting files) that Claude loads lazily when it’s relevant to the current task, instead of being stuffed into context up front. See Skills & Custom Commands.
Auto Memory
Section titled “Auto Memory”Claude’s own self-maintained notes about a project — written and updated by Claude itself across sessions, stored separately from CLAUDE.md. It’s additive to CLAUDE.md, not a replacement for it. See Sessions, Context & Memory.
CLAUDE.md
Section titled “CLAUDE.md”A project’s manually maintained long-term instructions file, read at the start of every prompt. This is where you put conventions, gotchas, and anything that must always be true — the stuff you don’t want to repeat every session. See Sessions, Context & Memory.
Compaction
Section titled “Compaction”Claude Code’s automatic summarization of context when the context window fills up. It keeps the session going, but detail gets lost in the summary — which is usually the reason Claude “forgets” something you told it earlier. See Sessions, Context & Memory.
Context window
Section titled “Context window”The finite amount of text — files, conversation history, generated code — Claude can hold in view at once during a session. Everything Claude “knows” mid-session has to fit in here.
Custom command
Section titled “Custom command”A reusable prompt template saved as a markdown file, invoked with /command-name. Good for prompts you type often enough that typing them out each time is a waste. See Skills & Custom Commands.
Dispatch
Section titled “Dispatch”Starting a brand-new task in a cloud environment, independent of your local machine — no laptop required, no local session tying it up. See Mobile & Remote Control.
A command that runs automatically in response to a Claude Code event — for example, auto-formatting a file after every edit, or blocking a risky command before it runs. See Hooks.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
Section titled “MCP (Model Context Protocol)”The standard protocol connecting Claude Code to external tools and systems — databases, browsers, ticket trackers, whatever. If Claude can talk to it and it isn’t a built-in tool, it’s probably an MCP server. See MCP & Built-in Tools.
Plan Mode
Section titled “Plan Mode”A mode where Claude gathers context and proposes a plan — and asks clarifying questions — before touching any files. Good for anything you want to sanity-check before it becomes a diff. See Plan Mode.
Plugin
Section titled “Plugin”A packaged bundle of skills, commands, agents, and/or hooks that installs as one unit, typically shared across a team or the community. See Plugins.
Ralph Loop
Section titled “Ralph Loop”A community-coined technique of repeatedly re-running Claude Code toward the same goal, letting it iterate its way to a working result. It’s not an official product feature — just a pattern people found useful. See The Ralph Loop.
Remote Control
Section titled “Remote Control”Connecting an already-running local session to another device (like your phone) so you can steer or approve it remotely without being at your laptop. See Mobile & Remote Control.
Routine
Section titled “Routine”A scheduled, recurring task that runs Claude Code automatically on a cron-like schedule, without you kicking it off by hand. See Scheduled Routines.
Subagent
Section titled “Subagent”A specialized agent with its own instructions and restricted tool access, invoked by the main session for a specific kind of task (code review, test-writing, research). Keeps the main session’s context clean by doing the messy work elsewhere. See Subagents.