You'll noticeTier: how much it should matter to you
2Useful: my rating, 1 to 5
1Signal: worth watching, 1 to 5
InternalsArea: what it touches
Bug FixesKind: in v2.1.317,
Bug FixesSection of the release
What
Claude Code watches its settings files so it can pick up your edits without a restart. There was a short gap between reading the files at startup and the watch going live, and an edit made in that gap could be missed.
Now, once the watch is running, Claude Code compares each settings file once against the version it read at startup. If the file changed in between, Claude Code reloads it and writes "changed before its watch was live" to its debug log. If the watch later reports that same version again, Claude Code ignores it, because it has already handled it.
Why
An edit to your settings made while Claude Code was starting up could before be silently never applied. That gap is now closed.