Source Intelligence

DisclaimerUnofficial, and not affiliated with Anthropic. Nearly all of this is read straight out of what ships: npm bundles, captured prompts, published docs. Anthropic's own notes go in verbatim, marked as theirs. The rest is my reading, and every entry carries the strings behind it. If one looks wrong, vote it down and say why.

All of v2.1.120 Home All releases olderv2.1.119 v2.1.121newer
Claude Code v2.1.120

Lean Prompt Mode (Condensed Tool Descriptions)

Feature flag
tengu_vellum_lantern Off in both readings

The flag server returned off for the account this site reads and for the anonymous baseline. A reading of off cannot rule out a rollout these two readings sit outside of.

This account: off · anonymous baseline: off · compiled default in v2.1.120: no gate table built for this version

These values were read against a different version of Claude Code, so treat them as the nearest reading available instead of one taken on this release.

Read once, for one account on one subscription tier, against v2.1.120. It isn't a statement about your account. What a flag value here can and cannot tell you

What

A new prompt optimization mode that significantly reduces system prompt token usage by sending shorter, denser tool descriptions to capable models.

Usage
CLAUDE_CODE_LEAN_PROMPT=1 claude   # force enable via env var
Details
  • When active, tool descriptions for Grep, Glob, WebFetch, Write, Edit, WebSearch, TodoWrite, Bash, and the Task/Explore agent are replaced with much shorter versions
  • Example: the Grep tool description goes from a multi-paragraph usage guide to a compact 4-line summary
  • The Explore agent description is refined to emphasize it is a "read-only search agent" not suitable for code review or cross-file analysis
  • Activated by the CLAUDE_CODE_LEAN_PROMPT environment variable, or gradually rolled out via the tengu_vellum_lantern feature flag
  • Currently limited to Opus 4.6+ and Opus 4.7 models
Evidence

Lean prompt gate function checks CLAUDE_CODE_LEAN_PROMPT and tengu_vellum_lantern — search for "CLAUDE_CODE_LEAN_PROMPT"

Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.

See this entry in the whole of v2.1.120 →