What probably matters to youSection of the release
What
A new settings key, keybindingFlavor, picks which editing-key conventions the prompt input follows. Set it to "readline" and Ctrl+W deletes back to the previous whitespace, the way Bash and other readline programs behave. The default when unset is "classic", which keeps the long-standing behaviour of deleting the previous word. No experiment flag is involved; anyone who sets the key gets it.
Details
Accepted values are "classic" and "readline"; the value is optional and an unrecognised one falls back to undefined, meaning classic behaviour.
The readline path adds a delete-to-previous-whitespace cursor operation, distinct from the existing delete-previous-word.
The flavor is read once per session and consumed by both the main prompt input and a second single-line input component.
This is separate from the existing normal/vim editing mode.
Usage
{ "keybindingFlavor": "readline" }
Evidence
keybindingFlavor, Which conventions the prompt's editing keys follow: "readline" matches Bash and other readline programs (Ctrl+W deletes back to the previous whitespace); "classic" (default) keeps Claude Code's long-standing behavior (Ctrl+W deletes the previous word), "readline" matches Bash and other readline programs (Ctrl+W deletes back to the previous whitespace)
Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.
Two sources agreeTwo things we can check say the same as this entry.
Anthropic's release notes agreeAdded a keybindingFlavor setting: set it to "readline" to make Ctrl+W in the prompt delete back to the previous whitespace, as in Bash; the…
The name it cites is new in this buildNew in this build: keybindingFlavor
