Claude Code v2.1.116: Major Performance Improvements and Enhanced User Experience

The Claude Code team has released version 2.1.116, bringing substantial performance improvements and user experience enhancements that power users have been waiting for. This release focuses on optimizing large session handling, streamlining MCP operations, and delivering a smoother development experience across popular editors.

What’s New

Performance Enhancements

Faster Session Resume: The /resume command now performs up to 67% faster on sessions larger than 40MB, with improved handling of sessions containing many dead-fork entries. This addresses one of the most requested performance improvements from the community.

Optimized MCP Startup: Multiple stdio servers now start faster, with resources/templates/list deferred until the first @-mention, reducing initial load times.

Enhanced Terminal Experience

Smoother Scrolling: VS Code, Cursor, and Windsurf users will notice significantly improved fullscreen scrolling. The /terminal-setup command now automatically configures your editor’s scroll sensitivity for optimal performance.

Improved Progress Indicators: The thinking spinner has been redesigned to show inline progress updates (“still thinking”, “thinking more”, “almost done thinking”), replacing the previous separate hint row for a cleaner interface.

Developer Quality of Life

Better Search Functionality: The /config search now matches option values, so searching “vim” will find the Editor mode setting, making configuration discovery more intuitive.

Non-blocking Doctor: You can now open /doctor while Claude is responding, without waiting for the current turn to finish.

Enhanced Plugin Management: /reload-plugins and background auto-updates now automatically install missing dependencies from your configured marketplaces.

API and Tool Improvements

Smarter GitHub Integration: The Bash tool now provides helpful hints when gh commands hit GitHub’s API rate limits, allowing agents to back off gracefully instead of retrying.

Improved Usage Tracking: The Usage tab in Settings now displays 5-hour and weekly usage immediately and handles rate-limited endpoints more gracefully.

Agent Hook Support: Agent frontmatter hooks: now properly fire when running as a main-thread agent via --agent.

Security and Bug Fixes

This release includes important security improvements to sandbox auto-allow functionality and fixes numerous issues including:

Improved rendering for Indic scripts in terminal UI
Fixed keyboard shortcuts in Kitty protocol terminals
Resolved scrollback duplication issues
Fixed modal overflow problems on short terminals
Addressed various API errors and edge cases

How to Update

To update to Claude Code v2.1.116:

Use the built-in update command: /update
Or download the latest version from the GitHub releases page
Restart your development environment to ensure all changes take effect