A guard rejecting hooks dirs and orchestrator mode on Windows exists but its platform argument defaults to "linux", so it never triggers.
The self-hosted runner launcher now takes a path to a settings file and passes it to the session it spawns as --settings, and settings is added to the argument names the server is not allowed to override. A separate guard is meant to fail with an explanation when --hooks-dir, SELF_HOSTED_RUNNER_HOOKS_DIR or orchestrator mode is used on Windows, but its platform argument defaults to the literal "linux" and both callers rely on that default, so it never fires in this build.
- The reserved-argument list stops a server-provided config from replacing your settings path.
- The Windows error text explains that orchestrator mode depends on the spawn-runner lifecycle hook.
orchestrator mode is not supported on Windows: it is driven by the spawn-runner lifecycle hook
Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
| `claude agents` | Open [agent view](/docs/en/agent-view) to monitor and dispatch parallel background sessions. Use `--cwd <path>` to show only sessions started under that directory, or `--json` to print active sessions as a JSON array fo…cli-reference see the edit
Anthropic's documentation has since written up --settings, on CLI reference.