Under the hoodTier: how much it should matter to you
1Useful: my rating, 1 to 5
2Signal: worth watching, 1 to 5
ModelsArea: what it touches
Internal ChangesKind: in v2.1.281,
Internal ChangesSection of the release
What
Side queries (sideQuery) are requests Claude Code sends to the model apart from the main exchange. They gain two changes:
retryAfterBudgetMs, a new option that wraps the network responses. Retry-After is a server's instruction to wait a given time before trying again, and this option sets a time budget in milliseconds for that waiting.
onFetchAttempt now actually wraps each network request, instead of having no effect on it.
The block at the start of the system prompt that carries attribution and fingerprint information is now built by a helper with a forceAttributionHeader option. The system prompt is the set of instructions sent to the model before the conversation.
Why
In practice, side queries can be given a limit on how long they will wait when a server asks them to retry later.
How sure we are
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubtThe finding does not say which side queries set `retryAfterBudgetMs` or what `forceAttributionHeader` changes in the attribution block.
Anthropic's release notes agreeFixed CLAUDE_CODE_RETRY_WATCHDOG sessions failing on the first 5xx or dropped connection after a run of 429/529 waits, and sleeping uncapped…
