Claude Code v2.1.84 Release - Enhanced Managed Settings and New Hook Events

Claude Code v2.1.84 was released on March 25, 2026, introducing significant enhancements to managed settings, new hook events for reactive environment management, security improvements, and numerous bug fixes.

Enhanced Managed Settings

The release introduces a managed-settings.d/ drop-in directory, allowing separate teams to deploy independent policy fragments that merge alphabetically. Previously, settings were confined to a single configuration file, but now teams can分工 to define policies more granularly.

The new sandbox.failIfUnavailable setting enables exiting with an error when the sandbox is enabled but cannot start, instead of running unsandboxed. This addresses security requirements where sandboxed execution is mandatory.

Additionally, disableDeepLinkRegistration prevents claude-cli:// protocol handler registration, useful for enterprise deployments requiring controlled protocol handling.

New Hook Events for Environment Management

Two new hook events, CwdChanged and FileChanged, enable reactive environment management. Integration with tools like direnv becomes possible, allowing automatic environment variable updates when changing directories or modifying files.

CLAUDE_CODE_SUBPROCESS_ENV_SCRUB=1 environment variable strips Anthropic and cloud provider credentials from subprocess environments, including the Bash tool, hooks, and MCP stdio servers, ensuring safer execution environments.

User Experience Improvements

Transcript search is now available—press / in transcript mode (Ctrl+O) to search, then use n/N to step through matches. This makes searching through past conversations significantly easier.

Ctrl+X Ctrl+E is now an alias for opening the external editor (readline-native binding; Ctrl+G still works). Pasted images now insert an [Image #N] chip at the cursor for easier positional referencing in prompts.

Agents can now declare initialPrompt in frontmatter to auto-submit a first turn, enabling more granular agent control.

Security and Performance

Numerous bug fixes address issues including: macOS exit hangs, screen flashing on idle, diff timeout for very large files, UI freezes on startup when voice input was enabled, and the —mcp-config CLI flag bypassing allowedMcpServers/deniedMcpServers managed policy enforcement.

Performance improvements include reduced Bedrock SDK cold-start latency, improved —resume memory usage and startup latency, and faster plugin startup with disk cache.

Additional Changes

• Added transcript search with / key in transcript mode
• Added Ctrl+X Ctrl+E as external editor binding
• Pasted images now insert [Image #N] chips
• Agents support initialPrompt in frontmatter
• chat:killAgents and chat:fastMode rebindable via keybindings
• Fixed mouse tracking escape sequences leaking to shell
• Fixed Claude Code hanging on exit on macOS
• Improved plugin startup performance

Additional Information

For the complete changelog, refer to the GitHub releases page.