Anthropic keeps shipping Claude Code on a two-day rhythm. Together, 2.1.235 and 2.1.236 bring a handful of things that noticeably smooth out life in the terminal.
Pin your startup model
The one that removes the most friction: the new ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_MODEL environment variable. It sets which model every new session starts on. Until now you had to set that by hand after each launch if the default didn’t suit you. Now you write it into your environment once – and you’re done.
Spellcheck right in the prompt
2.1.235 adds an optional spellcheck setting. Turn it on and Claude Code underlines misspelled words as you type, using your installed aspell, hunspell, or ispell. Small, but nice when you write long prompts and don’t want to spot the typo only after hitting send.
A ping when the other session is done
If you run several Claude Code sessions in parallel, you know the problem: you never quite know when the second one finishes. SendMessage now takes a notify_when_idle option. You ask another session on the same machine to tell you exactly once, the next time it goes idle. No more glancing over constantly.
Sandbox tightening on macOS
2.1.236 turns the security screw a bit further: the sandbox on macOS gets wildcard rules that deny read access on purpose. Along with it, a bundle of fixes for cases that used to break when the directory a session had switched into got deleted – clipboard copy, background housekeeping, background sessions, and local MCP logs now keep running cleanly.
Odds and ends from 2.1.235
Nested markdown lists no longer misalign at depth 3 and up, and wrapped list items get a hanging indent. Background cloud sessions like /ultrareview or /autofix-pr eat less memory and CPU, because their event stream is no longer fully re-rendered on every update. And in Vim mode, NORMAL mode and cursor position survive toggling the transcript.
My take
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_MODEL is the kind of feature you only appreciate once it’s there. If you always want the same model, you stop retyping it. notify_when_idle, meanwhile, hints at where this is heading: several sessions working in parallel and nudging each other. The terminal is slowly turning into a control room for a small team of Claudes.
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