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 v2.1.163 Home All releases olderv2.1.140 v2.1.165newer

Organization Version Enforcement (requiredMinimumVersion / requiredMaximumVersion)

What

Administrators can now enforce a minimum and/or maximum Claude Code version through managed policy settings. If the running version is outside the allowed range, Claude Code exits at startup with instructions on how to update or downgrade.

Details
  • requiredMinimumVersion: If the running version is older than this value, Claude Code exits with a message to update using the organization's approved method.
  • requiredMaximumVersion: If the running version is newer than this value, Claude Code exits with a message to install an approved version (claude install <version> may also work).
  • Both settings are only enforced from managed/policy settings (managed-settings.json / MDM). They have no effect in user or project settings.
  • Exempt commands: update, install, and doctor bypass the version check so users can fix the problem.
  • Invalid semver values are logged as errors and ignored rather than blocking startup.
Evidence

Version check at startup (search for "is older than the minimum version required by your organization" and "is newer than the maximum version allowed by your organization")

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

See this entry in the whole of v2.1.163 →