Claude Code 2.1.265 loads a whole folder of plugins

Claude Code 2.1.265 lets --plugin-dir point at a whole folder of plugins, loading every child folder that carries a manifest and picking up children added or removed while the session runs, one of the entries in the release notes published on Github alongside a new 1 GB cap on tool results saved to disk.

At a glance

• Two prompt-cache regressions are fixed: foreground-spawned subagents changed their tool list and system prompt prefix on resume, and agent teammates moved SubagentStart hook context and preloaded skills out of the prefix.
• A plugin path containing a backslash could bypass the symlink containment check on macOS and Linux, and plugin directories whose names begin with two dots were wrongly refused as outside the plugin root.
• Claude Desktop and Cowork now send user.email and user.groups in the telemetry they pass through a Claude apps gateway, matching terminal sessions, while gateway sessions export OpenTelemetry directly to a collector named in OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT.

Most of this release is plumbing for long-running and centrally managed installs rather than new capability. The plugin-directory change reads as an answer to teams that keep internal tooling in one checkout, and the cluster of prompt-cache fixes is likely a cost item as much as a latency one. The gateway, telemetry and managed-settings entries point at deployments where Claude Code is administered by policy rather than configured machine by machine.

A single --plugin-dir loads every plugin in a folder and follows changes without a restart

Pointed at a directory, the flag treats each child folder holding a manifest as its own plugin, and folders created or deleted during a session are added or dropped as they appear. A plugin's default component folder that the operating system cannot check, a symlink loop for example, used to be skipped silently; /plugin now lists it with the error code.

Display metadata now prefers the marketplace entry over plugin.json on the Installed tab and in claude plugin details, filling gaps from plugin.json. /plugin Discover and Browse, along with claude plugin list --json --available, previously showed no description or display name for marketplace plugins whose metadata lives only in plugin.json.

Gateway sessions export OpenTelemetry straight to the collector named in OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT

Sessions on a Claude apps gateway now export OpenTelemetry directly to a collector the gateway's managed settings name in OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT, and sessions without a named collector keep using the relay. That relay used to pause all forwarding to a collector for 30 seconds after rejecting a few payloads as malformed or too large.

Machines carrying forceLoginGatewayUrl in managed settings start as Claude apps gateway sessions from startup, matching forceLoginMethod set to gateway, and a leftover claude.ai login or API key is not used. /login no longer reports that no gateway URL is configured when re-run in a session already signed in to a gateway set by managed settings.

VS Code and SDK sessions stop requiring re-login when a session was closed while its token was refreshing. Remote Control sessions send the end-of-turn signal after the reply's last message, so the Claude app no longer shows a reply as finished before its last part arrives.

Resuming after a dead process keeps the interrupted tool call instead of rewriting the last prompt

A resume after the previous process died mid-tool no longer rewrites the last prompt, and the interrupted tool call is kept and marked interrupted. Resuming a workflow run whose container restarted now fails with a clear error when the run journal is missing, instead of rerunning every agent. Long sessions that read many files resume faster.

Tool results saved to disk are capped at 1 GB, and the preview shown in the conversation states when a saved file was truncated. Non-interactive sessions, meaning -p with stream-json input, the Agent SDK and cloud sessions, stop resetting the shell working directory at each new user message, so a cd persists across turns.

MCP servers configured as http that only speak the legacy HTTP+SSE transport now connect, because Claude Code falls back to SSE as the MCP specification describes. On Windows, Read, Write and Edit stop refusing every file with a symlink resolution error inside an AppContainer or restricted-token sandbox.

The 14-day archive clock The VS Code extension gains automatic archiving of sessions left inactive for a set period, governed by a new Archive inactive sessions setting whose default is 14 days. Two extension fixes ship with it: sidebar chat returning blank after Reload Window or a restart when a conversation had been open for more than 10 minutes, and the timeline dot sitting below the text on the Remote Control is active message.