--system-prompt

A Claude Code CLI flag, read out of the shipped bundle. No mined inventory carries it: everything below comes from what this site has written about it.

What it is

Presence across releases

The miner has never read a build containing this name. It is here because a changelog entry of ours names it, which is evidence that it existed and not evidence of which releases carried it. The inventory starts at v2.1.138 and everything older than that was never mined.

Changelog entries naming it

1. v2.1.248Switching model over the SDK can also swap the system prompt

   Over the SDK, set_model can also swap your custom system prompt from the next turn.

   named in this entry

2. v2.1.242Command-line system prompts kept separate from resolved ones

   Your typed --system-prompt values are kept apart from the resolved ones for cloud and remote setup.

   named in this entry

Documentation pages

• CLI reference reference table Claude Code CLI
• Agent SDK reference - Python mentions it Claude Code CLI
• Error reference mentions it Claude Code CLI
• Fullscreen rendering mentions it Claude Code CLI
• Run Claude Code programmatically mentions it Claude Code CLI
• Monitoring mentions it Claude Code CLI
• Create custom subagents mentions it Claude Code CLI

A reference table page is one whose own table defines this name, and it is where the description above came from. A page that mentions it carries the name somewhere in its text and may say nothing about it at all. Every page carrying it.

Read out of the published npm bundle release by release, and out of Anthropic's own documentation as this site captured it. Nothing on this page is a description anybody here wrote about what the CLI flag does. All CLI flags.