What's new in Claude Code v2.1.119

A shorter list than recent releases but with quietly significant changes. /config settings finally persist to ~/.claude/settings.json and participate in the override chain. --from-pr and the owner/repo#N shorthand now support GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub Enterprise, and your git remote's host — first-class non-GitHub support. --print and --agent modes now honor agent frontmatter consistently with interactive. PowerShell tool gains Bash-parity auto-approval. Hooks gain duration_ms. Plus plugin auto-update smarts, a Vim Esc fix, OTEL/status-line enrichments, and a Vertex AI tool-search default change.

/config settings now persist to settings.json with the full override chain

Why: Runtime UI settings like theme, editor mode, and verbose changed with /config didn't survive restarts, and their place in the project/local/policy override precedence was murky.

What: Persists /config settings to ~/.claude/settings.json and participates in project/local/policy override precedence.

How: Automatic — change /config, your choice now sticks and respects higher-scope overrides.

Non-GitHub Git support in --from-pr and owner/repo#N shorthand

Why: Teams on GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub Enterprise, or self-hosted Git were locked out of --from-pr review and had owner/repo#N links always point to github.com.

What: --from-pr now accepts GitLab merge-request, Bitbucket pull-request, and GitHub Enterprise PR URLs; owner/repo#N shorthand now uses your git remote's host.

How: claude --from-pr ; inline owner/repo#123 resolves to your origin's host automatically.

New UI chrome settings: prUrlTemplate and CLAUDE_CODE_HIDE_CWD

Why: The footer PR badge hard-coded github.com, and the startup logo always showed the working directory — awkward in demos or when recording.

What: Adds prUrlTemplate setting to point the footer PR badge at a custom code-review URL, and CLAUDE_CODE_HIDE_CWD env var to hide the working directory in the startup logo.

How: Set prUrlTemplate in settings.json; export CLAUDE_CODE_HIDE_CWD=1 in your shell.

--print honors agent tools/disallowedTools; --agent honors permissionMode; PowerShell auto-approve

Why: Headless --print mode ignored the agent's tool restrictions, --agent didn't respect the agent's permissionMode, and PowerShell users still hit prompts that Bash had learned to skip.

What: --print mode honors agent tools:/disallowedTools:; --agent honors the agent's permissionMode for built-in agents; PowerShell tool commands can be auto-approved in permission mode (Bash parity).

How: Automatic for --print and --agent; configure PowerShell allow-rules in .claude/settings.json permissions.

Hooks: PostToolUse and PostToolUseFailure include duration_ms

Why: Hook-based observability pipelines had no signal for tool execution time — only that the tool ran.

What: PostToolUse and PostToolUseFailure hook inputs now include duration_ms, measuring tool execution time excluding permission prompts and PreToolUse hooks.

How: Read duration_ms from your hook's stdin JSON; already populated in 2.1.119.

Plugin auto-update respects version constraints + parallel MCP reconfig

Why: A plugin pinned by another plugin's version constraint was stuck at its old version, and subagent/SDK MCP server reconfiguration connected servers serially, slowing startup.

What: Plugins pinned by another plugin's version constraint now auto-update to the highest satisfying git tag; subagent and SDK MCP server reconfiguration now connects servers in parallel.

How: Automatic — auto-update picks the best satisfying tag and MCP reconnects faster across subagent spawns.

Vim: Esc in INSERT no longer pulls queued messages back

Why: Vim users hitting Esc to leave INSERT had a queued message unexpectedly reappear in the input, breaking the mental model.

What: Esc in INSERT mode no longer pulls a queued message back into the input; press Esc again to interrupt.

How: Enable vim mode and press Esc as usual; behavior now matches expectations.

Security: blockedMarketplaces enforces hostPattern/pathPattern + telemetry enrichments

Why: Managed-settings blockedMarketplaces documented hostPattern/pathPattern but didn't enforce them, and OTEL events couldn't be correlated across tool_result/tool_decision without manually threading tool_use_id.

What: blockedMarketplaces now enforces hostPattern and pathPattern; OTEL tool_result/tool_decision include tool_use_id; tool_result also includes tool_input_size_bytes; status-line stdin JSON includes effort.level and thinking.enabled.

How: Existing policy and telemetry pipelines now receive the new fields and enforcement automatically.

Tool search disabled by default on Vertex AI

Why: Vertex AI returned an unsupported beta header error whenever Claude Code tried to enable the tool search tool by default.

What: Disables tool search by default on Vertex AI to avoid the unsupported-beta-header error; opt in explicitly via ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH.

How: export ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH=1 on Vertex AI to turn it back on.

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

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

Claude Code docs: code.claude.com/docs

• (00:00) - /config now persists to settings.json