Vertex AI Setup Wizard / Claude Code v2.1.98

What

An interactive, multi-step wizard for configuring Google Vertex AI as your model backend, with credential validation and model pinning.

Details

Step-by-step flow: authentication method → service account key (if applicable) → GCP project → region → credential verification → model pinning → confirmation
Three authentication methods: Application Default Credentials (gcloud auth), service account key file, or existing environment credentials
Reads existing gcloud configurations to auto-discover project IDs
Validates credentials by making a test API call to Vertex AI
Probes each model tier (Sonnet, Opus, Haiku) with a one-token request to check availability
Provides specific error messages for common issues: expired credentials, missing permissions, wrong region, missing API enablement
Model pinning option: pin specific model versions that are confirmed working, or use Claude Code defaults (auto-updates)
Saves configuration to ~/.claude/settings.json under the env key
For ADC users, reminds that gcloud auth application-default login refreshes credentials automatically

Evidence

Vertex setup wizard (search for "How do you authenticate to Google Cloud?" and "Pin model versions")

Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.

Other releases about the same thing. Found by shared names or similar wording; neither means one caused the other.

Vertex AI Setup Wizard