Warnings before and after your sign-in reaches its time limit

What

Some sign-ins to Claude Code have a fixed end date, and renewing them does not move that date. Claude Code now tells you about this before and after it happens:

• A warning appears when your sign-in is about to end or may already have ended. It says: "Renewing it does not move those dates. Run claude auth login before then, or use claude setup-token for unattended jobs."
• New error messages appear once the limit is reached, such as "Login reached its time limit · Please run /login". They say the login cannot be renewed and point to claude auth login.
• For unattended jobs, such as scripts or CI pipelines (automated build systems), the messages point to claude setup-token together with the CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN environment variable. An environment variable is a named value set outside Claude Code that it reads when it starts.
• The sign-in's end date, credential_expires_at, is now included in data that Claude Code passes along, and a warning event is reported to Anthropic.

The finding that found the error messages showed only their text, so what exactly triggers each message was not traced.

Why

Long-running sessions and automated jobs get advance notice and a clear next step instead of a sudden, unexplained sign-in failure. If you run Claude Code unattended, a long-lived token from claude setup-token avoids this time limit.