All Articles
Curating the /model picker with modelPicker, and what replacing the lineup hides
Claude Code v2.1.242 added modelPicker, which lets you write the /model lineup yourself. Here is how appending differs from replacing, why project settings are ignored, and where it quietly narrows what availableModels allows.
Trusting the allow rules in your repo, or moving them to the environment
On disposable machines, the permissions.allow rules committed to your repo are dropped while the workspace waits to be trusted. Here is what gets dropped and what survives on 2.1.246, where each kind of rule belongs, and a preflight that catches the gap before a run starts.
I decide the prompt cache TTL by where I come back to, not how long I was away
Claude Code v2.1.242 added promptCacheTtl and subagentPromptCacheTtl. Whether the one-hour cache pays off depends on returning to the same directory and the same git state, not on how long the break was. Here is the order I check things in.
A One-Letter Typo in settings.json Is Ignored Without a Single Warning
I diffed claude doctor output between a settings.json with misspelled keys and a correct one. There was no difference at all. Here is what actually gets validated, what slips through, and a small check that catches typos before they cost you a day.
One Space in a Folder Name Turned 80 Checks Into Zero
An inspection loop reported 80 files checked and 0 readable. The files were fine. Here is how word splitting turns path fragments into real directories, measured side by side, plus the count assertion I now put in front of every delete-heavy batch.
I counted the keys in my connected folder: filenames found 5 of the 18
A record of counting what lives inside a connected folder, once by filename and once by file contents. Filenames returned 24 hits of which only 5 were real, while a content scan returned 18 of which 13 left no trace in their names. Includes a scanner that never prints a secret, its real output, and the rules I adopted afterwards.
The same skill lived in two places, and only one copy still had its files
Two scopes held skills with identical names. The SKILL.md files matched down to the sha256, yet one copy was missing the files its own body points to. Here is how I scanned 66 skills and rewrote the detector three times to get from four hits to two real ones.
The September Price Increase for Sonnet 5 Isn't Happening. Rebuilding a Forecast I Got Wrong in July
Sonnet 5's introductory $2/$10 pricing was supposed to rise to $3/$15 on September 1. It won't. Here's how to recompute your own effective cost from the usage numbers you already have, with working code.
Not Every Unreachable Connector Means the Same Thing in an Unattended Run
When an unattended task cannot reach a connector, the cause splits into three states: still connecting, unauthenticated, or genuinely absent. Each demands the opposite response. Here is the resolver that tells them apart.
Handing a long job to another session — and the completion marker for when the notification never arrives
How to use notify_when_idle to hear when another Claude Code session finishes, and a small completion marker that keeps you from waiting forever when the notification is dropped.
Switching to headersHelper in Claude Code broke auth for project-scoped catalogs only
Moving a private plugin catalog to headersHelper worked at user scope and failed under the project directory. The cause was credential non-inheritance. Here are two working helpers, measured execution costs, and what unattended runs need.
Adding ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_MODEL Changes Nothing While ANTHROPIC_MODEL Is Still Set
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_MODEL, added in v2.1.236, is not a replacement for ANTHROPIC_MODEL. Here is how the two differ, plus a Python script that lists every place a model can be pinned.