Warp CLI > Using the agent

Managing conversations in the {{WARP_CLI}}

Start, switch, compact, and resume agent conversations in the {{WARP_CLI}}, including conversation history and the --resume flag.

The Warp CLI saves every agent conversation as you work, so closing your terminal never loses your progress. You can start fresh conversations, reopen past ones from a searchable history, compact long conversations to free up context, and resume a conversation after exiting the CLI.

Conversation persistence

The Warp CLI saves conversations to your Warp account automatically. There is no separate save step. When you reopen a past conversation, the CLI restores the full transcript, including agent responses, tool calls, and file-edit diffs, so you can review earlier work in detail before continuing.

The CLI shows one conversation at a time. Opening a past conversation replaces the current transcript, and your previous conversation remains available in the conversation history. You can’t switch conversations while the current conversation is responding or while a command is running; wait for it to finish or stop it with Ctrl+C first.

Starting a new conversation

Use any of these slash commands to clear the transcript and start a fresh conversation:

/new - Starts a new conversation.
/agent - Same as /new.
/clear - Same as /new.

Each command accepts an optional prompt. For example, /new write tests for the parser starts a new conversation and immediately sends that prompt to the agent.

Starting a new conversation is useful when you switch tasks. The agent begins with a clean context window, and you avoid carrying over history that is no longer relevant. If you want to keep the history but reduce its size instead, use /compact.

Conversation history

To browse and reopen past conversations, open the conversation menu in either of two ways:

/conversations - Run the slash command from the input.
← - Press the left arrow key when the input is empty and the cursor is at the start. The empty input shows a ← for conversations hint as a reminder.

The menu lists your Warp Agent conversations, including conversations started in the Warp app and completed cloud agent runs tied to your account. To use the menu:

Type to filter conversations by title.
Press ↑ and ↓ to change the selection.
Press Enter to open the selected conversation, or Esc to close the menu.

Opening a conversation restores its transcript with tool calls and diffs intact, and new prompts you send continue that conversation.

To continue a cloud agent run from the CLI, or to hand the current conversation off to a cloud agent, see cloud handoff and orchestration in the Warp CLI.

Compacting context

Long conversations eventually fill the model’s context window, which can degrade response quality. The /compact command frees up context by asking the agent to summarize the conversation history so far and carry only the summary forward.

/compact - Summarizes the conversation history with default instructions.
/compact <instructions> - Adds custom summarization instructions. For example, /compact keep the API design decisions tells the agent what to preserve in the summary.

After compaction, a collapsed Conversation summary block appears in the transcript. The summary stays collapsed so it doesn’t crowd the transcript; select it to expand the full summary text. The conversation keeps working normally after compaction, with the summary standing in for the compacted history.

Resuming conversations

When you exit the Warp CLI with a non-empty conversation, it prints a command for picking that conversation back up:

To continue this conversation, run:
warp --resume YOUR_CONVERSATION_TOKEN

Run the printed command to reopen the conversation in a new CLI session. YOUR_CONVERSATION_TOKEN is a conversation identifier generated by Warp; you don’t need to record it yourself as long as you can scroll back to the exit message, and the same conversation also remains available from the /conversations menu.

The --resume flag loads the conversation at startup and restores the full transcript, so you can continue prompting where you left off. For the complete list of command-line flags, see the Warp CLI reference.

Agent conversations in the Warp CLI - How transcripts, tool calls, diffs, and agent questions render
Cloud handoff and orchestration in the Warp CLI - Hand off conversations to cloud agents and resume cloud runs
Warp CLI reference - Command-line flags, slash commands, and keyboard shortcuts