Claude Code shipped v2.1.126 today, May 1, 2026. This is the 9th release in April’s sprint and continues what has been a 2–3 releases per week cadence throughout the month. Here is the complete picture of what shipped this week across v2.1.120 through v2.1.126, with operational context for each feature that actually matters.
v2.1.126 — Today’s Release
Gateway Model Picker
The gateway model picker allows you to route different tasks within a single Claude Code session to different models. This is the first step toward Claude Code as a multi-model orchestration layer rather than a single-model coding assistant. Practical use: run Haiku 4.5 on file reading, search, and summarization tasks where speed matters; route Opus 4.7 at complex reasoning, architecture decisions, and code generation where quality is the priority. The cost reduction on high-volume workflows can be material — Haiku is roughly 30× cheaper per token than Opus.
PowerShell as Primary Shell on Windows — Git Bash No Longer Required
This is the most significant quality-of-life change in this release for enterprise Windows shops. Claude Code previously required Git Bash as its terminal environment on Windows, which meant every Windows developer needed a non-standard shell installation, created friction in corporate IT environments with software approval processes, and produced a different developer experience than Mac/Linux teammates.
Starting with v2.1.126, PowerShell is the primary shell on Windows. Git Bash is no longer required. For enterprise teams where half the developer fleet runs Windows and software installation requires IT approval, this removes a significant deployment barrier. Claude Code is now a standard Windows application from an IT management perspective.
OAuth Code Terminal Input for WSL2, SSH, and Containers
Authentication in headless environments — WSL2 sessions, SSH remote development, Docker containers — previously required workarounds. v2.1.126 adds OAuth code terminal input: Claude Code displays the authorization code directly in the terminal, you paste it into your browser, and authentication completes without requiring a browser redirect to the headless environment. Eliminates the most common authentication friction point for remote and containerized development workflows.
claude project purge
New command that cleans up stale project data accumulated across sessions. For teams running Claude Code in CI/CD pipelines or long-running agent workflows, project data can accumulate and affect performance. claude project purge gives you explicit control over that cleanup rather than relying on automatic garbage collection.
v2.1.120–122 — April 28 Stack
alwaysLoad MCP Option
MCP servers can now be configured to always load regardless of context window state. Previously, Claude Code would make decisions about which MCP servers to initialize based on available context. alwaysLoad: true in your MCP server config guarantees that server is always available — critical for production deployments where MCP tools need to be reliably present, not conditionally loaded.
claude ultrareview Subcommand
claude ultrareview triggers a deep, multi-pass code review that goes beyond standard review. It applies multiple review personas in sequence — security researcher, performance engineer, maintainability analyst — and synthesizes findings into a prioritized report. For code that needs to meet high standards before production merge, ultrareview is the command. It consumes more tokens than standard review, so use it on pull requests that matter, not every commit.
claude plugin prune
Removes unused plugins from your Claude Code installation. As the plugin ecosystem has grown and plugin auto-update behavior has been refined in recent releases, teams accumulate plugins that are no longer active in their workflow. claude plugin prune audits your installed plugins against recent usage and removes those that have not been invoked within a configurable time window.
Type-to-Filter Skills Search
The skills picker now supports live type-to-filter — start typing a skill name and the list filters in real time. For teams with large skill libraries or plugin collections, this eliminates the scroll-and-hunt workflow that slowed skill invocation. Small UX change, large daily time savings at scale.
ANTHROPIC_BEDROCK_SERVICE_TIER Environment Variable
New environment variable that allows Claude Code running on Amazon Bedrock to specify service tier at the environment level rather than per-request. For teams using Claude Code through Bedrock as their primary deployment path — common in regulated industries that require AWS-native infrastructure — this simplifies configuration management across multiple environments and removes per-request overhead.
OpenTelemetry Improvements
Extended OpenTelemetry trace data now includes more granular span information for Claude Code operations. For enterprise teams with existing observability infrastructure (Datadog, Grafana, Honeycomb), Claude Code activity is now more fully integrated into your trace timeline — you can see exactly where Claude Code operations land within the context of your broader application traces.
v2.1.123 — April 29
Fixed OAuth 401 retry loop triggered when CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_BETAS was set. If you were seeing repeated authentication failures in environments with that flag set, update to v2.1.123 or later immediately.
Update Now
Update via npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code@latest or through your package manager. v2.1.126 is the current stable release. For teams running Claude Code in CI/CD, update your Docker base images or pipeline steps to pin to 2.1.126.
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