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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 v2.1.233 Home All releases ←olderv2.1.232 v2.1.234newer→
Claude Code v2.1.233

Remaining-token countdown is now on by default

You'll notice
Useful4 Signal3
Context Management Notable

Claude now gets a running count of tokens left by default, re-anchored on each of your prompts.

Feature flag
tengu_lapis_anchor_user_turn Off by default, switched on for this account

The shipped code defaults this off, and the flag server returned on for the one account this site reads on this version. That is the reading that makes the entry above worth a second look, and it still says nothing about your account.

This account: on · anonymous baseline: on · compiled default in v2.1.233: off

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 v2.1.233. It isn't a statement about your account. What a flag value here can and cannot tell you

What

Claude Code emits a <total_tokens>N tokens left</total_tokens> block in the system prompt and after each tool result, counting down from the configured budget. This used to be off unless enabled; the built-in fallback is now padded-countdown. The companion behaviour of re-anchoring the countdown on each regular user prompt also flipped to on by default. Both can still be set explicitly, and remote config can override either.

Details
  • Resolution order: env var CLAUDE_CODE_TOTAL_TOKENS_REMINDER, then the totalTokensReminder setting, then the server-side value whose in-source fallback moved from "off" to "padded-countdown".
  • The budget comes from totalTokensReminderBudget.
  • Re-anchoring uses CLAUDE_CODE_TOTAL_TOKENS_REMINDER_AFTER_USER_TURN, then totalTokensReminderAfterUserTurn, then the server value whose fallback flipped from false to true.
  • Suppressed entirely by CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_ATTACHMENTS or CLAUDE_CODE_SIMPLE.
  • The source only fixes the fallback; a server-side value still wins.
Evidence

is on \u2014 task-budget semantics). Defaults to padded-countdown. , "@internal Emit a <total_tokens>N tokens left</total_tokens> block in the system prompt, after each tool result, tengu_lapis_anchor_user_turn

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

Related

Other releases about the same thing. Found by shared names or similar wording; neither means one caused the other.

See this entry in the whole of v2.1.233 →