October was a big month for Claude Code 🍁

We shipped mods, made the desktop app better at running lots of sessions side by side, gave you more insight into where your usage goes, and plenty more. Here's a recap!

Coming back to an old session got lighter on your usage.

Claude Code now compacts long idle sessions right before the prompt cache expires (~1h). If you come back to one later, it only has to reprocess the summary instead of the entire conversation.

And on Pro and Max, resuming a really long conversation now gives you a heads-up first if picking it back up would use a big chunk of your 5-hour limit.

You also get a bit more control over Claude's effort.

Typing ultrathink in a message now bumps effort to xhigh for just that one turn, so you can think harder on one problem without changing your setting for the whole session.

You can now also tell Claude which effort level to run a subagent at. If your session is on high but you want the subagents for a task on medium, just ask!

And /usage in the CLI now tells you in plain words what's using up your limits. If there's a quick fix, you can press f to apply it right there.

Even in bypass permissions mode, Claude Code still asks before a few especially risky rm commands. That’s intentional, but if you’re in a throwaway container and are okay with those running without asking, you can now set CLAUDE_CODE_EVEN_MORE_DANGEROUSLY_SKIP_PERMISSIONS=1.

And shell commands that hit their timeout now keep running in the background instead of getting cut off, so a long build or test suite isn’t killed halfway.

And a few smaller ones:

- Cloud sessions now start setting up while you’re still typing your prompt, so there's less waiting after you hit send
- You can click any line in a cloud session's diff and leave a comment, and it goes to Claude with your next message
- Max, Ultra and Team plans now include a monthly API credit for building with the Claude API and Agent SDK
- MCP servers that support it can ask you a follow-up question mid-task, and run long jobs in the background

To see all that we shipped in October, make sure to check out the changelog. Looking forward to November!

code.claude.com/docs/en/change…