Claude Code v2.1.261: New Skill Doctor and Output Limits

Claude Code v2.1.261 (from Anthropic) introduces several practical additions for developers who rely on AI coding agents. The standout is /skill-doctor, a new diagnostic command that shows which loaded skills are never used and how much context they consume, making it easier to prune them and reclaim tokens.

New Capabilities

• Output limit settings: bashOutputMaxChars and taskOutputMaxChars let you raise how much command and background-task output Claude receives inline before saving to a file — up to 128K characters.
• Large subagent prompts: The new --append-subagent-system-prompt-file flag reads the subagent system prompt from a file, accommodating prompts too large for the command line.
• Policy diagnostics: /status and claude doctor now include an "Organization policy" line that explains why your org's policy couldn't be loaded (e.g., a proxy not passing the endpoint).

Key Fixes

• Typed or pasted characters occasionally landing out of order or being dropped during fast input — fixed.
• /add-dir <subdirectory> no longer prints a false "couldn't be resolved" error on /net automounts.
• Bedrock setup wizard: no more hanging when AWS never responds; now times out with a clear error. Also works behind TLS-inspecting proxies.
• Cloud sessions: plugin synced from claude.ai no longer discarded when managed settings force-enable it; avoids fallback to a marketplace clone.
• Remote Control: fixed stale permission mode, stuck spinners after stopping a turn, and inbound event stream failures behind TLS-inspecting proxies on Windows.
• gcpAuthRefresh no longer opens a browser at startup if the credential is still valid but the check is slow.
• Fixed high CPU usage when a background agent couldn't be resumed due to a tight retry loop.
• Feature flags gated to newer versions no longer apply to older versions running on the same machine.
• /usage and the VS Code usage panel now correctly show model-specific weekly limits even when the endpoint is rate-limited.
• claude -p --resume <file> with a malformed session ID now resumes under a fresh ID.
• Progress indicators in iTerm2, Ghostty, and ConEmu no longer show as finished while background workflows run.

Who It's For

Developers using Claude Code extensively, especially those with complex setups involving cloud sessions, remote control, or corporate proxies.