Claude Code v2.1.212 Ships Runaway-Loop Guardrails: Per-Session WebSearch and Subagent-Spawn Caps

Claude Code Changelog·high signal

The July 17 release adds a session-wide WebSearch cap (default 200, tunable via CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_WEB_SEARCHES_PER_SESSION) and a subagent-spawn cap (default 200, CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_SUBAGENTS_PER_SESSION; /clear resets the budget) to stop autonomous agents burning tokens in search or delegation loops. It also auto-backgrounds any MCP tool call running longer than 2 minutes so the session stays usable. First real budget ceilings for unattended long-horizon runs.