What's new in Claude Code v2.1.117

A dense release. The headline fix: Opus 4.7 finally computes /context against its 1M window instead of 200K, so sessions stop autocompacting prematurely. Pro and Max subscribers get a default effort bump from medium to high on Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6. Plugin ecosystem gets a real overhaul across dependencies, errors, and marketplace auto-resolve — plus managed-settings marketplace enforcement applied uniformly. Native macOS and Linux builds replace Glob and Grep with embedded bfs and ugrep. Forked subagents and agent mcpServers expand to external builds and --agent main-thread sessions. Plus /model persistence, /resume stale-session summarize, Advisor Tool labeling, broader cleanupPeriodDays sweep, and OpenTelemetry enrichments.

Opus 4.7 /context now computed against 1M window

Why: Opus 4.7 shipped with a 1M context window, but Claude Code was still computing /context percentages against 200K, causing premature autocompact warnings.

What: Fixes /context on Opus 4.7 to compute against the native 1M window, eliminating inflated percentages and premature autocompact.

How: Automatic — upgrade to v2.1.117 and Opus 4.7 sessions use 1M as the denominator.

Default effort bumped to high on Opus 4.6 / Sonnet 4.6 for Pro/Max

Why: Pro and Max subscribers were defaulting to medium effort on Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6, under-using available quality on flat-rate plans.

What: Bumps default effort from medium to high for Pro/Max subscribers on Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6.

How: Automatic — set /effort medium explicitly to restore the old default.

Plugin dependency UX overhaul

Why: plugin install bailed with "already installed" when a plugin had unmet deps, errors were cryptic, and adding a marketplace didn't resolve missing deps.

What: plugin install now installs missing deps on already-installed plugins; errors say "not installed" with install hint; plugin marketplace add auto-resolves from configured marketplaces.

How: Re-run plugin install to backfill deps; claude plugin marketplace add now fills in anything missing.

Managed-settings marketplace enforcement

Why: blockedMarketplaces and strictKnownMarketplaces were only enforced on some plugin operations — a policy gap for IT-managed fleets.

What: Enforces blockedMarketplaces and strictKnownMarketplaces on plugin install, update, refresh, and autoupdate operations.

How: Existing managed-settings keys now apply uniformly; no config change needed.

Native builds: Glob and Grep replaced by embedded bfs and ugrep

Why: Separate Glob and Grep tools incurred a per-call round-trip and lacked ugrep's richer pattern features.

What: On native macOS and Linux builds, Glob and Grep are replaced by embedded bfs and ugrep invoked through the Bash tool — faster and more capable.

How: Automatic on native builds; Windows and npm-installed builds unchanged.

Forked subagents opt-in for external builds

Why: Forked subagents were gated behind internal flags, blocking external builds and SDK users from using them.

What: Enables forked subagents on external builds via the CLAUDE_CODE_FORK_SUBAGENT=1 environment variable.

How: export CLAUDE_CODE_FORK_SUBAGENT=1 before launching Claude Code or your SDK session.

Agent mcpServers frontmatter now fires under --agent

Why: Agent-level mcpServers in frontmatter only loaded for subagent invocations, leaving main-thread --agent sessions without agent-specific MCP.

What: Loads agent frontmatter mcpServers for main-thread agent sessions launched via --agent, not only subagents.

How: Add mcpServers: to your agent frontmatter; now applies under claude --agent and subagent launches both.

/model persists across restarts + startup header shows pin source

Why: /model selections could be silently overridden by project pins on restart, and users had no signal about where a pinned model came from.

What: /model selections now persist across restarts even when a project pins a different model, and the startup header shows when the active model comes from a project or managed-settings pin.

How: Automatic — your /model choice sticks; the startup header tells you when a pin is overriding.

/resume offers to summarize stale, large sessions

Why: Re-reading a huge stale session on /resume was slow and dumped a massive context on the model, whereas --resume already offered a summarize path.

What: Adds a summarize-before-re-read prompt to /resume on stale large sessions, matching the existing --resume flag behavior.

How: Run /resume — when a stale large session is detected, accept the summarize offer.

Advisor Tool: experimental label and stuck-error fix

Why: Advisor Tool was preview-quality but lacked that signal, and sessions were getting stuck with "Advisor tool result content could not be processed" on every prompt and /compact.

What: Adds "experimental" label, learn-more link, and startup notification to the Advisor Tool dialog; fixes the persistent result-processing error.

How: Automatic — existing Advisor Tool users get both the labeling and the fix.

cleanupPeriodDays retention extends to more directories

Why: Long-running installs accumulated untracked state in ~/.claude/tasks/, ~/.claude/shell-snapshots/, and ~/.claude/backups/ that retention sweeps didn't touch.

What: cleanupPeriodDays retention sweep now also covers ~/.claude/tasks/, ~/.claude/shell-snapshots/, and ~/.claude/backups/.

How: Automatic on next sweep; existing cleanupPeriodDays setting applies.

OpenTelemetry enrichments

Why: OTEL events lacked signal about which slash command fired and at what effort level, making it hard to attribute cost and latency to code paths.

What: Adds command_name and command_source to user_prompt events; adds effort attribute to cost.usage, token.usage, api_request, and api_error when supported.

How: Automatic; custom/MCP command names are redacted unless OTEL_LOG_TOOL_DETAILS=1 is set.

Hosts: Alex Chen & Sarah Kim · Generated from the official Claude Code CHANGELOG.

Full changelog: github.com/anthropics/claude-code/CHANGELOG.md

Claude Code docs: