What
Claude Code has a new step that syncs plugins (add-ons that extend Claude Code) early in startup, before the normal startup path. It appears aimed at remote sessions, which the members call CCR (Claude Code sessions that run on a hosted machine rather than your own computer).
- The step does nothing unless the environment variable
CLAUDE_CODE_CCR_EARLY_PLUGINS_SYNCis set. An environment variable is a named setting passed to a program when it starts. - It also does nothing in interactive sessions, where you type to Claude Code directly.
- It is skipped when a proxy auth helper is configured. A proxy auth helper is a program that supplies sign-in details for a network proxy, switched on with
CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_PROXY_AUTH_HELPER. - When the early sync runs, Claude Code records an
early_plugins_syncmarker in its logs. CLAUDE_CODE_CCR_EARLY_PLUGINS_SYNCwas added to two lists of environment variables that Claude Code passes on to the processes it starts, so the setting reaches spawned or remote processes.
Why
This can change when plugins are ready during startup, but only for a process that has CLAUDE_CODE_CCR_EARLY_PLUGINS_SYNC set. Without that variable, startup works as before.
Names in the bundleCLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_PROXY_AUTH_HELPER
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubt
It is not clear what the startup check tests or what the early plugin sync marker causes Claude Code to do.