Group of 5 Under the hood
Sessions running over a local Unix socket or SSH tunnel now skip normal auth checks, policy-limit disk caching, and report a local host instead of the real API URL
What
- When
ANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKETis set, authentication checks now short-circuit: a session is considered authed just fromCLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKENorANTHROPIC_API_KEYbeing present, skipping the usual base-url/API-key-helper/OAuth-scope checks, and the reported auth type is derived the same simple way instead of probing the keychain or WIF/OAuth state. - Policy-limits configuration can now be loaded lazily after startup if it wasn't already requested at boot, and loading is skipped entirely when there's no reason to fetch it, such as a first-party provider with no
ANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKEToverride. - Policy-limits responses are no longer written to or deleted from the on-disk cache under
ANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKET, and the "would fail closed" 24-hour staleness check no longer applies in this mode. - Status/host reporting now recognizes local SSH-tunnel sessions and reports a local endpoint ("local machine (via claude ssh tunnel)" or a
localhostURL) instead of parsing or showing the real API host.
Why These sessions talk to Anthropic through a local socket or tunnel rather than the normal network path, so the usual credential probing, disk caching, and host-URL reporting don't apply or would be misleading; this makes auth, policy limits, and status reporting behave correctly for that setup.
Names in the bundleANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKET
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.
Added since
A small documentation edit on Error reference touched a line naming ANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKET after this was published.
* `ANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKET` set, so the session sends its requests through a local socket rather than to `api.anthropic.com`errors see the edit
Confirmed since
Anthropic's documentation has since written up ANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKET, on Claude Code changelog.
* Fixed org policy being fetched through, and rejected by, third-party local proxies set via `ANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKET`; they are again treated like other custom gateways, including for Remote Controlchangelog 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 ANTHROPIC_UNIX_SOCKET, on Claude Code changelog.