What
Read is the tool Claude uses to open files. It used to have a shortcut: if Claude read a file again and it had not changed since the last read, Read could send back a short file_unchanged result instead of the file's content. That shortcut has been removed:
- The code in Read that produced
file_unchangedis deleted. It was guarded by thetengu_read_dedup_killswitchflag and adedupUnchangedReadssetting; this code no longer reads the flag, and whether anything else still reads it was not checked. - The
dedupUnchangedReadssetting is gone from the tool's context, including a place that set it to false. - Read's output description no longer includes the
file_unchangedtype or itsseededsource, which marked a match against something loaded at startup, such as CLAUDE.md or nested memory files, rather than an earlier Read. - The way a
file_unchangedresult was turned into a message for Claude is removed too. - Reminders that tell Claude a text file was edited now carry a
rereadEntry(a hash and a length) when the file had been read in full.
The stock description of the Read tool, captured under this release, is unchanged.
Why
In this code, a repeat read of an unchanged file no longer gets the short stub. Whether unchanged re-reads are now handled somewhere else, for example through the new rereadEntry, is not shown, so how much of the conversation repeat reads take up may differ.