Claude Code v2.1.261

What's changed

• Added an "Organization policy" line to /status and claude doctor that says why your organization's policy could not be loaded, such as a proxy not passing the endpoint through

• Added bashOutputMaxChars and taskOutputMaxChars settings to raise how much command and background-task output Claude receives inline before it is saved to a file, up to 128K characters

• Added --append-subagent-system-prompt-file to read the subagent system prompt from a file, for prompts too large to pass on the command line

• Added /skill-doctor to show which loaded skills go unused and what they cost in context, so you can prune them

• Fixed typed or pasted characters occasionally landing out of order or being dropped during fast input or key repeat

• Fixed /add-dir <subdirectory> printing a false "couldn't be resolved" error when the working directory is on a /net automount

• Fixed the Bedrock setup wizard hanging when AWS or an AWS credential helper never responds (it now times out with a clear error), and its model checks failing behind a TLS-inspecting proxy

• Fixed cloud sessions discarding a plugin synced from claude.ai when managed settings force-enable it in enabledPlugins, then falling back to a marketplace clone that could fail

• Fixed being unable to delete the character immediately before an inline [Image #N] chip in the prompt input

• Fixed resuming a session losing hook output and other context around parallel tool calls, which changed the resumed request

• Fixed Remote Control showing a stale permission mode when a phone, browser, or claude.ai app attaches to a terminal session or after the mode changes in the terminal

• Fixed Remote Control sessions showing as still working (stuck spinner and Stop button) after stopping a turn from a connected phone or browser, or after a local slash command like /clear

• Fixed SDK and cloud sessions ignoring a Stop or interrupt sent just after the first prompt, before the turn had started; the turn now stops instead of running to completion

• Fixed Remote Control uploading a session pulled with /teleport into the connected session, which appeared appended to the original on phone and web

• Fixed Remote Control's inbound event stream failing behind TLS-inspecting corporate proxies on native Windows

• Fixed Remote Control sessions showing the default effort level on claude.ai when the effort comes from settings

• Fixed gcpAuthRefresh opening a browser at startup when the Google credential check was slow, even though the credential was still valid

• Fixed claude.ai connectors staying absent for the whole session when the startup connector fetch timed out — the CLI now retries in the background

• Fixed sustained high CPU usage when a background agent could not be resumed and its wake-up was retried in a tight loop

• Fixed feature flags gated to a newer version occasionally applying to an older Claude Code version running on the same machine

• Fixed /usage and the VS Code usage panel dropping a model-specific weekly limit row when the usage endpoint is rate limited or when opened right after startup

• Fixed claude -p --resume <file> adopting a malformed session ID recorded in the transcript; it now resumes under a fresh session ID instead

• Fixed the terminal progress indicator (iTerm2, Ghostty, ConEmu) showing the session as finished while a background workflow or agent was still running

• Fixed a rare layout glitch where a box could render with the wrong height after its container switched between row and column direction

• Fixed Claude apps gateway client IP when a trusted proxy appends a port to X-Forwarded-For; with an access list set, an unreadable entry now gets 403

• Fixed Claude apps gateway telling Claude Desktop to export OpenTelemetry as JSON even when the terminal CLI uses protobuf, so protobuf-only collectors rejected Desktop's data

• Fixed Desktop and web showing a session as busy while it only watches an artifact for updates

• Fixed Claude in Chrome file_upload failing with "paths: expected array, received undefined" in local Cowork sessions run from the Claude Desktop app

• Fixed SendMessage to an offline Remote Control session on another machine reading as delivered; the result now says delivery is queued until that machine reconnects

• Fixed plugin install hints from CLIs run in background Bash commands: they are now detected, and the raw <claude-code-hint> tag no longer leaks into the conversation

• Fixed in-process agent-team teammates re-sending their first-turn tool and skill announcements on the second turn, which changed the request prefix and missed the prompt cache

• Improved the /model picker and the VS Code model pill to show a model's name instead of its raw Bedrock, Vertex AI, or LLM gateway ID when Claude Code recognizes it

• Improved startup on Google Vertex AI when GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS is set: API client creation no longer re-runs Google Cloud project discovery or spawns extra gcloud processes

• Improved streaming performance: already-rendered blocks are no longer re-checked by layout on each update

• Improved the dangerous-rm safety prompt to also catch rm -rf on positional parameters and inside double-quoted sh -c scripts

• Improved handling when the API sends no response headers: the retry now waits up to API_TIMEOUT_MS (10 minutes by default) instead of another 3 minutes, and the messages say what to change

• Changed a Claude apps gateway 403 on the managed settings load (at startup or after /login) to say Claude Code may not be enabled for the organization, instead of advising a new sign-in

• Changed machines whose managed settings pin forceLoginMethod: "gateway" to ignore a leftover API key or claude.ai login and ask for /login; Bedrock, Vertex AI, and Foundry sessions are unaffected