Anthropic’s Claude is getting a small but meaningful interaction upgrade: a new /btw command that lets a session ask a quick side question without derailing whatever the main thread is doing.
The key distinction is that this side channel is designed to be ephemeral. According to Lydia Hallie’s announcement, /btw is read-only, comes with no tool access, and doesn’t add anything to the conversation history. Ask the question, get a response, dismiss it—and that response disappears rather than becoming part of the session’s long-term context.
A “side question” that doesn’t pollute the session
For longer, multi-step sessions, keeping context clean can matter as much as getting the right answer. The idea behind /btw is that quick clarifications—things that would otherwise interrupt the flow—can be handled without changing the session state.
A couple of constraints are central to how it behaves:
- Read-only:
/btwcan’t take actions or modify anything. - No tool access: it won’t reach for tools even if the main session can.
- No history impact: it won’t get appended to the running conversation.
- Dismiss-to-discard: the answer isn’t kept around after closing it.
Users responding to the announcement framed it as especially handy during more intensive use, including “high thinking” mode.
Source: https://x.com/lydiahallie/status/2031516357918171509
