So, version 2.1.234 of Claude Code just landed, and, uh, the
big shift here is that you no longer have to kill a running turn just to change your
environment.
Mate, you have no idea how much time that saves me in the shed.
I, I, I was halfway through a multi repo refactor yesterday,
right?
Claude was hammering away on the backend, and suddenly it needed context from dot
slash packages slash shared.
Old days, you had to cancel the whole execution, re run it,
burn those tokens all over again.
But now you can just invoke slash add dir mid execution?
Exactly!
You hit slash add dir, point it to dot slash packages slash shared,
or pop open slash permissions or slash config right while the tool is running.
It just dynamically attaches the new directory to the scope and keeps rolling.
No restart needed, flat out brilliant.
That, that, that whole idea of not wasting context connects directly to what they
did with the built in claude api skill, too.
Previously, if you enabled that skill, it would do an eager full spec prompt
injection.
That was dumping over 200,000 tokens into your context window right off the bat!
200,000 tokens before you even type a prompt?
Crikey, that is a proper memory hog.
Right!
But in 2.1.234, they switched to on demand documentation loading.
So that initial context overhead drops from over 200,000 tokens down to roughly
25,000 tokens.
That is nearly an eightfold reduction in idle context cost.
That is massive for token budgets, especially when you are running longer sessions.
And, uh, speaking of long sessions, they added auto resume for daily usage limits,
yeah?
Yeah, exactly.
If you hit your daily limit on claude.ai, the session doesn't just crash out
anymore.
It pauses, waits for the reset window, and then automatically continues where it
left off.
You can toggle that on or off in slash config.
That is so handy if you leave a huge batch job running overnight.
But, wait, there was also a security patch tucked into this release,
wasn't there?
Something about Windows path handling?
Yeah, critical fix there.
It rejects Windows NT namespace paths, the ones starting with backslash question
mark question mark backslash.
Turns out attackers could use those paths in remote file reads or included CLAUDE.md
files to leak NTLM hash credentials over SMB.
Oof, leaking NTLM credentials just from loading a repository file,
that is a nasty vector.
Good on them for patching that out fast.
Definitely.
Now, there is one caveat to keep in mind if you are messing with slash TUI mode
switches.
If you launched your session with explicit tool restriction flags,
like allowed tools or disallowed tools, slash TUI will outright refuse to switch
modes.
Ah, so it keeps you locked into your security sandbox so you don't accidentally
bypass your own rules mid stream.
Precisely.
Safety guardrails stay intact, but you get way more control mid turn.
Good update overall.
Too right.
Well, I am off to run some more mid turn add dirs.
Catch you later, James.