CRAFT Tutorials · Getting Started · 5 of 12
This is the part that makes CRAFT feel different: next time you sit down, you pick up exactly where you stopped — without re-explaining a thing.
This completes the trio. You’ve seen how to start a session and how to end one with a handoff. This post is the reward for ending cleanly: picking that work back up.
How to continue
Continuing isn’t a separate command — it’s the same move you use to start, and CRAFT does the rest:
- Open your project folder in Cowork.
- Say
Initialize a CRAFT session. - Claude reads your memory and your last handoff — and picks up exactly where you stopped.
✓ You’ll know it worked when Claude’s opening summary refers to your previous work — the thing you were doing, the next step you left — instead of greeting you like a stranger. That’s your past session coming back.
You don’t re-explain who you are, what you’re building, or where you left off. That’s the whole point: the handoff you saved last time becomes the briefing Claude reads this time.
Saving as you go (so there’s something to continue)
Continuing only works because you saved. You don’t have to wait until the end — you can checkpoint any time:
- “Save my work” or “Checkpoint this” — saves the current state so it’s safe. Good before a break or a big change.
- “Back up this file first” — when you’re about to change a specific file you care about.
- “Save a handoff” — the final save at the end of a session, which also writes the note that lets next time resume.
Where does it all live? Locally, in your project folder — your handoffs in communications/, your memory in CLAUDE.md. It’s your data, in plain files you can open any time. (Backing a project up to the cloud / GitHub is a more advanced topic for later.)
That’s continuity, start to finish. Saving as you go plus resuming on start means your work carries forward session after session. Next up, the thing you’ll actually do in those sessions: Run your first recipe.