Both the published-catalog and served-catalog model resolution paths now support stale-while-revalidate: when a cached catalog entry exists but is stale, Claude Code kicks off a background re-fetch and waits up to the network timeout for it, falling back to the stale entry if the refresh doesn't complete in time. This can return a stale cached catalog immediately while the refresh runs concurrently, and logs whether the stale value was kept or refreshed; the behavior is unconditional, with no flag gating it.
Model catalog now does a stale-while-revalidate background refresh
Model catalog now refreshes stale entries in the background instead of blocking on a re-fetch.
You'll noticeTier: how much it should matter to you
3Useful: my rating, 1 to 5
1Signal: worth watching, 1 to 5
Model CatalogArea: what it touches
ImprovementsKind: in v2.1.260,
ImprovementsSection of the release