What
A new start-up step probes the credential version and warms the OAuth token cache through the credentials store, clearing the cached entry if the read comes back empty. It is skipped for token-based auth, including when CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN or CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN_FILE_DESCRIPTOR is set, and failures are logged rather than fatal.
Evidence
Credentials prime through the store failed
Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.
Names in the bundleCLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKENCLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN_FILE_DESCRIPTOR
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.
Confirmed since
Anthropic's documentation has since written up CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN, on Extend Claude with skills.
* A session that doesn't use a sign-in stored by `/login`, such as one that authenticates with an API key, or one where `ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN`, `CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN`, or an `apiKeyHelper` script supplies the credentialskills see the edit
One source agreesOne thing we can check says the same as this entry.
Anthropic's documentation agrees
Anthropic's documentation has since written up CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN, on Extend Claude with skills.