Some MCP servers (outside tools and services Claude Code can connect to) ask for "step-up" authentication. This means they ask you to sign in again, or grant more access, before a particular action. Claude Code has a dialog for this, and the switch that controls it is decided remotely.
When Anthropic's servers send no value for that switch, Claude Code now treats the dialog as on. Before, it treated it as off. The function that used to read this switch now reads a different remote switch, which falls back to off. In a reading taken before this release, Anthropic's servers returned the step-up dialog switch as on for this site's account.
If you use MCP servers that need step-up authentication, you may now see this dialog where you did not before.
tengu_mcp_step_up_auth_dialog On for this account, and not off by defaultThe flag server returned on for the one account this site reads, and nothing in this release compiles it off by default. The compiled default is shown below, and says which it is when we cannot read one: a fifth of gates compile in a string or a number rather than on or off, and most published releases have no gate table behind them at all. No client can see what the server returns for your account.
This account: on · anonymous baseline: on · compiled default in v2.1.288: on
These values were read against a different version of Claude Code, so treat them as the nearest reading available instead of one taken on this release.
tengu_sorted_otter Not enough to sayNothing here resolved what this flag was doing on this version, so nothing here should be read as on or off.
This account: no value returned · anonymous baseline: no value returned · compiled default in v2.1.288: off
These values were read against a different version of Claude Code, so treat them as the nearest reading available instead of one taken on this release.
tengu_mcp_startup_policy_seed Not enough to sayNothing here resolved what this flag was doing on this version, so nothing here should be read as on or off.
This account: no value returned · anonymous baseline: no value returned · compiled default in v2.1.288: on
These values were read against a different version of Claude Code, so treat them as the nearest reading available instead of one taken on this release.
Read once, for one account on one subscription tier, against v2.1.288. It isn't a statement about your account. What a flag value here can and cannot tell you
It is not clear what the second remote switch, now read where the old one was, controls.
New in this build: tengu_sorted_otter