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Tag: Claude Code CLI

  • Claude Code Ultraplan and Ultrareview: Anthropic’s New Agentic Planning Layer Explained

    Claude Code Ultraplan and Ultrareview: Anthropic’s New Agentic Planning Layer Explained

    Two new Claude Code capabilities shipped in the April sprint that have received almost no coverage despite being significant workflow expansions: Ultraplan, a cloud-hosted agentic planning workflow, and Ultrareview, a deep multi-pass code review command. Together they represent Claude Code’s first serious steps toward being an agentic planning tool, not just an interactive coding assistant.

    Ultraplan: Cloud-Hosted Agentic Planning

    Ultraplan is currently in early preview. The workflow is three steps:

    1. Draft in the CLI — from your terminal, describe the task or project you want Claude Code to plan. Ultraplan generates a structured execution plan: steps, dependencies, tool calls, expected outputs, error-handling branches.
    2. Review in the browser — the plan is pushed to a cloud-hosted web editor where you can read it in a structured interface, add comments, modify steps, flag concerns, and approve or reject sections. This is the human-in-the-loop gate that makes agentic execution trustworthy.
    3. Run remotely or pull back local — once approved, the plan can execute in Anthropic’s cloud infrastructure (no local machine required, runs while your laptop is off) or be pulled back to execute locally with full observability in your terminal.

    The remote execution capability is the most significant aspect. This is Claude Code’s first “runs while your laptop is closed” feature — distinct from Cowork Routines (which are consumer-facing) and designed specifically for developer workflows. A migration plan, a batch refactoring job, a test suite generation task, or a dependency upgrade across a large codebase can be approved, handed to cloud execution, and completed overnight without a machine staying on.

    When to Use Ultraplan

    Ultraplan is designed for tasks where you want to review the approach before committing to execution — not for quick, single-step tasks. The review step adds 5–15 minutes to the workflow. That is worth it when:

    • The task spans multiple files, services, or systems where a wrong step has cascading effects
    • You are working in a production codebase where mistakes have real consequences
    • The task will take more than 30 minutes to execute and you want human review before investing that time
    • You are using remote execution and cannot monitor progress in real time
    • You are delegating the task to a junior developer or teammate who will execute the plan

    For quick tasks — generate a function, fix a specific bug, explain this code — use standard Claude Code. Ultraplan’s value scales with task complexity and execution risk.

    Ultrareview: Deep Multi-Pass Code Review

    The claude ultrareview subcommand applies multiple sequential review passes to code, each with a different evaluation focus:

    • Security review — injection vulnerabilities, authentication gaps, trust boundary violations, insecure dependencies, secrets exposure
    • Performance review — algorithmic complexity, unnecessary allocations, database query patterns, caching opportunities, concurrency issues
    • Maintainability review — naming clarity, function size and cohesion, documentation gaps, test coverage, coupling and cohesion

    Each pass generates findings, and Ultrareview synthesizes them into a prioritized report with severity ratings and specific remediation recommendations. The output is designed to go directly into a pull request review comment or a team review document.

    Ultrareview vs. Standard Review

    Standard claude review applies a single review pass optimized for breadth — it catches obvious issues quickly across all dimensions. Ultrareview applies specialized depth in each dimension sequentially. The trade-off is token cost and time: Ultrareview consumes 3–5× more tokens than standard review and takes proportionally longer.

    The recommended workflow: use standard review on every pull request as part of your CI pipeline. Reserve Ultrareview for high-stakes merges — releases, security-sensitive features, architecture changes, any code that will touch production payment or authentication flows.

    Both features are available now to Claude Code users on Pro and above. Ultraplan is in early preview — activate it via claude ultraplan --enable-preview. Ultrareview is generally available — run claude ultrareview [file or directory] from any Claude Code session.

  • Claude Code v2.1.126: Gateway Model Picker, PowerShell Default on Windows, and the Week’s Full Release Stack

    Claude Code v2.1.126: Gateway Model Picker, PowerShell Default on Windows, and the Week’s Full Release Stack

    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.