What
When a transcript is too large to share, Claude Code now tries progressively stripped versions rather than giving up. It walks a ladder of candidates (full, without the last API request, raw transcript lines only, metadata only), size-checks each before sending, and posts the first that fits.
Details
- A successful reduced upload records "payload_stripped" so it's visible that content was trimmed.
- Size failures and
RangeErrorduring serialisation fall through to the next variant; the precheck reportspayload_too_large_precheck. - Blocked outcomes (essential-traffic-only mode, data residency, auth) still fail immediately with their own reason codes and are not retried.
Evidence
payload_too_large_precheck
Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.