Unclear How a session comes to be treated as a runner child is not stated.
Claude Code has a worker that seeds your home settings, meaning it fills in settings files in the session's configuration folder. Before, it started only on a managed cloud worker, and any CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR (the environment variable that moves Claude Code's configuration folder) stopped it.
It now starts for two kinds of session:
- Managed sessions, which replace files in that folder that did not come from the seeding
- Runner child sessions, which keep those files
A runner child session must set CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR to an absolute path, meaning a full path starting from the top of the file system. If the session is neither kind, or the variable is missing or not absolute, the worker does not start. The environment variable CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_HOME_SETTINGS_SEED controls switching the seeding off.
Sessions started by a self-hosted runner can now get seeded home settings, and files already in their configuration folder are left alone.
How a session comes to be treated as a runner child is not stated.