Claude Code v2.1.84 Released — PowerShell for Windows, Smarter MCP, 30+ Fixes
Claude Code 2.1.84 landed overnight, and the headline feature for Windows developers is long overdue: a native PowerShell tool in opt-in preview. No more wrestling with bash emulation on Windows paths — PowerShell runs as a first-class shell alongside the existing bash tool. MCP gets meaningful quality-of-life improvements in this release: tool descriptions and server instructions are now capped at 2KB, which blocks OpenAPI-generated servers from bloating context and quietly degrading response quality. Servers configured both locally and via claude.ai connectors are now deduplicated, with local config taking precedence.
The release also adds a TaskCreated hook, a WorktreeCreate hook with HTTP type support, the CLAUDE_STREAM_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MS env var for tuning the streaming watchdog, and x-client-request-id headers on API requests to help debug timeout issues. Enterprise admins get a new allowedChannelPlugins managed setting — a signal that Anthropic is building out the policy control surface. Token counts at 1M+ now render as 1.5m instead of the unwieldy 1512.6k, and deep links now open in your preferred terminal. The 30+ bug fixes include a voice PTT key leak, Ctrl+U kill-to-line-start in multiline input, JSON schema 400 errors in workflow subagents, and a cold-start race that caused Edit/Write to fail with InputValidationError.
The 2KB MCP description cap deserves more attention than it's getting. OpenAPI-generated MCP servers regularly dump thousands of tokens of schema into context on every request — that cap alone will improve p90 response quality for heavy MCP users immediately, without any config changes on their end.