Common things that trip people up, and how to carry on.
Most "uh oh" moments at the terminal aren't broken; they're a key doing something you didn't expect. Here are the common ones.
I pressed Ctrl+C and something stopped. That's
the "cancel" key; your tutor stopped whatever it was doing. Just
type your next prompt and carry on. If the window closed entirely,
open a new one and type flt, then tutor —
your tutor picks up where you left off.
I pressed Ctrl+V and nothing pasted. On Windows, the paste that always works is right-click anywhere in the window (Ctrl+V usually works too — right-click is the one to reach for when it doesn't). On Linux, use Ctrl+Shift+V — that works whether or not the tutor is running. (On a Mac, paste is ⌘ Cmd+V as usual, everywhere.)
I pressed Ctrl+Z and the tutor seems to have
disappeared. Ctrl+Z doesn't mean
"undo" in the terminal; it pauses whatever was running. (Different
from how it behaves in a word processor.) To bring the tutor back,
type fg and press Enter. If that doesn't
work, type tutor again; your progress is saved. For
undoing AI changes to your files, just ask the tutor in chat
("undo that").
I want to wipe what I've typed and start over. Press Esc twice quickly. That clears the line. (A single Esc on its own cancels popups or menus.)
I pressed the Up arrow and my typing got overwritten. The Up arrow scrolls through your past prompts. Press the Down arrow to come back to a blank line, or Esc twice to clear.
Looks stuck, nothing happens when I type. Click into the window first to make it active. If still nothing, press Esc to cancel anything in progress, then try again.
I can't figure out how to quit. Type
/exit and press Enter. Or press
Ctrl+C twice in a row. Or just close the
terminal window; your progress is saved as you go.
I typed flt (or tutor) and it said
"not recognised". That message is Windows itself talking — the
window you're in can't see the command. It's
almost always a window (or a tab of one) that was already open when
the install finished. Close all your terminal windows, open
a fresh PowerShell window, and try again. If a fresh window still
says it, run the command by its full path once —
%LOCALAPPDATA%\FLT\bin\tutor.cmd — and if even that
doesn't work, message Becky. (Wondering what the cage behind all
this is? See The cage and the flt
command on Going further.)
The tutor is slow or seems to have lost the
plot. Long conversations cost more memory and eventually
the AI starts forgetting the start (see tokens and context windows on
the Hints and Tips page). End the lesson with End lesson;
your progress is saved, and a fresh session tomorrow will be
sharper.
I told the tutor to do something and it did the wrong thing. Just ask in chat: "undo that" or "take us back to the last save-point." The tutor handles the rollback. Then describe what you actually wanted, more specifically. (Being specific is half the whole game; see step 3 of the curriculum.)
I closed the window without saying "End lesson".
Don't panic. Your tutor saves your progress during every
session, not only at the end, so almost nothing is lost. Just
open your terminal next time, type flt, then
tutor, and then Continue learning; your
tutor reads its notes and carries on.
The tutor isn't reading my progress file at the start of
a session. Type Continue learning at the
start of the session. If you've already typed something else and
the tutor seems to have started a new session by mistake, say so:
"You should be reading my progress file; please do that
now."
Your tutor might be out of date. The tutor keeps improving after you install it. To see which version you have, ask it in chat: "What version are you?" If it's been a while since you installed, or Becky's mentioned an update, bringing it up to date is one safe copy-paste command that never touches your work or progress; see updating your tutor.
The tutor is making mistakes I don't know how to fix, or seems to be the thing failing. Message Becky or the WhatsApp group. That's the safety net, by design. Tell us what you were trying to do, what the tutor said, and what you'd expected.
On Windows, your work lives in the FLT folder — the one place both you (in File Explorer) and the tutor (in the cage) can see. Because it's shared across that boundary, it has a couple of quirks worth knowing about:
Capital letters don't make a filename different.
In the FLT folder, Notes.txt and notes.txt
are the same file — asking for a second file whose name
differs only in capitals will land you back at the first one. If a
file seems to have "lost" changes or the tutor says a file already
exists when you can't see it, check whether two names differ only in
capital letters, and rename one properly (right-click → Rename in
File Explorer, or ask the tutor).
To show the tutor a file from elsewhere on your PC, put it in the FLT folder first. The tutor can't see your Downloads, Desktop, or Documents — that's the wall doing its job. Drag or copy the file into the FLT folder in File Explorer, and from there the tutor can work with it as usual.
If the tutor won't start, flt gives errors, or the
cage just feels wedged, the ladder is: restart first, reset
last.
flt restartYour work is safe. Your project folder, everything you've built, and your progress notes live outside the cage — a reset can't touch them. You stay logged in to GitHub too.
What you lose is the conversation. Your chat history with the tutor goes, and you'll sign in to Claude again afterwards — the code-in-the-browser step from setup day. That takes about 30 seconds; the rebuild takes a few minutes.
flt resetThe cage runs on a copy of Linux that was downloaded the day you set it up, and it stays on that copy. After a year or so it's a long way behind on updates — which can show up as odd, hard-to-place problems: things failing to install, or downloads that used to work refusing to.
If that sounds like you, and a restart hasn't helped, this fetches
today's Linux and rebuilds the cage on it. Close the tutor
first — type exit inside the cage, then run
this from a fresh PowerShell window (on a Mac, Terminal):
flt update --imageIt costs you the same as a reset: your project folder, your work and your GitHub login are untouched, but your chat history goes and you'll sign in to Claude again. It asks "are you sure?" first, and the rebuild takes longer than a reset because it re-downloads Linux itself — give it a quarter of an hour and a decent connection.
Not sure whether this is your problem? Message Becky before running it.
Two tweaks worth knowing about if the default look isn't comfortable on your eyes.
Windows: hold Ctrl and scroll your mouse wheel — bigger one way, smaller the other. Works in the PowerShell window whichever version of Windows you're on.
Mac (Terminal): press ⌘ Cmd++ a couple of times; ⌘ Cmd+- shrinks it back.
Linux: in most terminals, press Ctrl+Shift++ a couple of times; Ctrl+- shrinks it back. If yours doesn't respond, look for a font-size setting in the terminal's Preferences menu.
Claude has several built-in colour themes. To switch, type
/theme at the tutor prompt and press Enter;
a menu appears. Use the arrow keys to pick a theme and press
Enter to apply it. The theme called
dark-ansi has sharper contrast that many people find
easier to read than the default. (Your tutor will also offer you
this at the end of your first chat.)
When something feels off and you don't know where to start, the shape of the recovery is always the same:
If none of that helps — message Becky.