Version 2.1.283 hit the npm registry on Friday at 18:46 UTC, and it carries a command for anyone whose instruction files have been growing for months: /doctor prompt-audit, or /checkup prompt-audit. It walks your CLAUDE.md files, skills, agents and commands looking for wording written for older models. Stale paths, stale commands and instruction files that contradict each other lead the report. Thinking keywords that Claude Code documents itself are left alone.
Two new brakes for administrators
availableModelsMatch adds a precision setting to the existing model list. Set it to exact and an availableModels entry allows only the model version it names. A new release stays blocked until somebody lists it. deniedModels comes at it from the other end: it blocks specific models even when availableModels would let them through.
Gateways get a new hint header. With CLAUDE_CODE_GATEWAY_HINT_HEADERS=1, Claude Code sends x-claude-code-prompt-id so an LLM gateway can group the requests that serve one user prompt. If you want cost per task rather than cost per request, that is the bracket you were missing.
The nastiest bug is a Windows one
On Windows the PowerShell tool could use cmd /c rd, rmdir, del or erase to delete folders Remove-Item refuses: drive roots, the home folder, places of that kind. Fixed. Also fixed: managed sandbox settings were ignored wholesale whenever one nested value was invalid. Now that single value fails closed and the rest of the block still applies.
Two small things with real consequences. The weekly Fable limit was missing from /usage and from the VS Code meters when telemetry was off. And Remote Control was unavailable on paid plans when DISABLE_TELEMETRY or DO_NOT_TRACK was set. Both now work without telemetry.
What feels different while you work
Images returned by MCP tools are now also written to a file, so Bash and Read can open them. /context finally counts MCP server instructions and gives them their own row. The tool list in /mcp shows more at once, scrolls with the mouse and page keys, and marks anything your organization has blocked with a warning icon. /tasks gains status icons and paging, and a dozen other lists respond to the wheel and to clicks. The compaction spinner now counts the summary’s tokens as they stream instead of drawing a percentage bar.
Then there is a long run of plugin fixes. claude plugin validate no longer waves through names Claude Code cannot install, and claude plugin uninstall no longer removes the wrong one of two plugins whose ids differ only in case.
After the bug-fix release comes the cleanup of your own config
Its predecessor 2.1.282 plugged four leaks that were losing extended thinking. This one does something else: it goes after the files you wrote yourself. prompt-audit is the first tool to admit openly that prompts age, that an instruction Sonnet 4 needed can get in Opus 5.5’s way. If you have been carrying a CLAUDE.md since spring, run it once. Expect it to find something.
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