What
Managed settings are rules an organisation's administrator sets for Claude Code. They can come from three places:
- a remote source
- MDM (device management software)
- a file on the machine
Claude Code picks among them in order of priority. It now also gives each source a rank for what it actually holds, from lowest to highest:
- absent
- present, but with no values that take effect
- holding real values
- marked as composing
A higher-priority source now wins only if its rank is at least as high as the lower sources. Before, the remote source won whenever it was present, unless it held only substitute values.
There is also a warning that a source "holds only values that could not be applied as written". It now appears only when the skipped source really holds values.
Why
If your remote policy is empty or all null, your MDM or file policy will now take effect instead of being shut out.