So, I was updating the CSS on a client's login page last night,
right in my local environment, and instead of squinting at those external contrast
calculators, I just ran the new /dataviz skill.
This is the new built-in tool that dropped in Claude Code v2.1.198,
and mate, it programmatically validates your color palettes against the WCAG 2.1
compliance standards right in the terminal.
No more manual copying of hex codes into web forms, it just scans the local files
and flags the contrast ratios that'll fail accessibility.
Brought to you by Jellypod AI, this tool is honestly a massive lifesaver for digital
designers who just want to keep their heads down in the code.
That is wild!
So /dataviz actually parses your local theme files, calculates the precise luminance
contrast ratio-like the standard 4.5-to-1 ratio for body text-and highlights the
failures directly?
That saves so much back-and-forth context switching.
Exactly!
It-it-it literally just spits out a neat little table of your foreground and
background pairings.
If your brand's neon green on white is sitting at a terrible 2.1-to-1,
it tells you right there before you even commit the code.
But wait-[excited] it gets even better.
If you update to the absolute freshest version, v2.1.199, which literally just
landed, they unlocked stacked slash-skills.
You can now chain up to five custom or built-in tools together.
Think about typing /lint /test and then your custom build skill all in one single,
beautiful command line.
The tool execution is fully pipelined.
Oh, wow.
Chaining up to five slash-commands in a single run is massive for local automation.
So, instead of running /lint, waiting for Claude to finish,
and then manually typing /test to verify your changes, you can just stack them.
But wait, what-what-what happens if the linter fails?
Does the stack halt, or does it keep executing downstream tools?
Ah, well, [clears throat] it depends on how you configure the execution,
but generally, the pipeline is smart enough to stop if a critical test breaks the
chain.
And speaking of things breaking, v2.1.199 also introduced some serious resilience
improvements under the hood.
You know when you're on a patchy Wi-Fi connection, or maybe behind a corporate
proxy, and your terminal tool just goes into an infinite loop of TLS retries,
burning your API tokens and rate limits while doing absolutely nothing?
Oh, the TLS retry burn is the absolute worst.
You just watch your terminal hang for three minutes while it secretly drains your
quota behind the scenes.
Yeah, it's a shocker.
Well, now Claude Code stops that TLS retry burn immediately.
If it detects a handshake or proxy issue, it halts the loop and spits out instant,
highly specific environment-variable diagnostics to tell you exactly which cert or
proxy config is blocking the pipe.
Plus, if the network does drop mid-response, they've added a mechanism that
preserves your partial code streaming.
So, if Claude was halfway through writing a 200-line React component and your
connection blips, you don't lose the whole stream and have to start over from
scratch.
That is incredibly practical.
Preserving that partial stream instead of throwing a generic network error and
discarding the buffer is a huge quality-of-life update.
It sounds like they're really focusing on making this tool resilient for actual,
real-world developer environments.
Too right.
It's all about keeping you in the flow state, mate.
Anyway, those are the big updates for this week.
Catch you later!
Sounds good, talk soon!