Task list

The task list is Claude's to-do checklist: items Claude created to plan multi-step work, with indicators showing what's pending, in progress, or complete. It's separate from the background-task view. To see running shells and subagents, use /tasks instead.

The list fills only in sessions that have the task-tracking tools, which Claude Code provides by default on Claude 3.x models, Opus 4 through 4.7, Sonnet 4 through 4.6, and Haiku 4.5. On any other model, including a model ID Claude Code doesn't recognize, the list stays empty unless you opt in with CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TODO_TOOLS=1 or one of the other ways under Task tool availability. When the session has the tools, the task list works as follows:

• Press Ctrl+T to toggle the task list view. The display shows up to five tasks at a time. When Claude hasn't created any checklist items yet, the toggle has no visible effect because there's nothing to display
• If you leave the list expanded, Claude Code restores the expanded view the next time you launch into a session that still has tasks, such as with --resume or --continue. When the task list is empty, Claude Code starts it collapsed
• To see all tasks or clear them, ask Claude directly: "show me all tasks" or "clear all tasks"
• Tasks persist across context compactions, helping Claude stay organized on larger projects
• To share a task list across sessions, set CLAUDE_CODE_TASK_LIST_ID to use a named directory in ~/.claude/tasks/: CLAUDE_CODE_TASK_LIST_ID=my-project claude