Claude Code 2.1.311, Copilot Assisted Permissions GA and GPT-6.1 Terra: October 27 Roundup

Claude Code shipped 2.1.311 on October 26 according to its GitHub releases page, and GitHub published two Copilot entries the same day on its changelog: assisted permissions are now generally available, and GPT-6.1 Terra is rolling out. Codex has only alpha builds since the stable 0.164.0.

Claude Code 2.1.311: fewer freezes, a new ultrathink

This is a large release, mostly fixes. The ones most people will notice:

• Fixed long freezes at startup and after file reads or edits when a CLAUDE.md file has a very long list item.
• Write and Edit no longer stall for up to 5 seconds on edits that change thousands of lines.
• Subagents can now use MCP tools from servers that finish connecting after the subagent starts, and SubagentStop hooks run once instead of about twice a minute.
• Standard-context sessions that cross 200K tokens now compact and continue instead of stopping with a 1M-context credits error.
• Requests the API marks as not retryable are no longer retried, which could hold a turn for minutes, or indefinitely in unattended retry mode.

Behavior changes worth knowing:

• ultrathink in the interactive terminal now runs its turn at xhigh effort on Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5 and Fable 5.1 through Anthropic's API. The rainbow highlight only shows where the keyword can actually raise effort.
• On Bedrock, Mantle, Vertex and Foundry, Claude Code loads model settings from a signed file on downloads.claude.ai. Set CLAUDE_CODE_MODEL_CATALOG=off to disable it, which matters for locked-down networks.
• DISABLE_COMPACT in settings files can now only turn compaction off, not back on. The VS Code extension also starts sessions with telemetry disabled when VS Code's own telemetry setting is off.
• The self-hosted runner gains --hold-idle-file and --max-hold-min to keep an idle session alive while the host reports leftover processes.

GitHub Copilot: assisted permissions are GA

Per the GitHub changelog, assisted permissions is a permission mode in Copilot CLI, the Copilot app and VS Code. When Copilot wants to run a command, access a file path or open a URL, a language model reviews the request. Anything it classifies as clearly safe proceeds automatically; everything else still asks you.

• Enable it with /permissions in the CLI, the Tool permissions picker in the app, or the permissions picker in VS Code.
• Enterprise admins can block Allow All while keeping Assisted, disable Assisted entirely, or set the default mode for new sessions. If the default is unavailable, sessions fall back to manual approval.

It is a middle path between approving every prompt and running with everything allowed, but the classifier is a model, so keep deny rules for anything destructive.

GPT-6.1 Terra arrives in Copilot

GitHub's GPT-6.1 Terra entry says the model is rolling out gradually to Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max, Business and Enterprise. It appears in the model picker across VS Code, Visual Studio, Copilot CLI, the cloud agent, github.com, GitHub Mobile, JetBrains, Xcode and Eclipse, and is billed at provider list pricing under usage-based billing. Business and Enterprise admins control access through the model policy in Copilot settings.

Codex: 0.164.0 stable, 0.165 and 0.166 alphas

The Codex releases page still lists 0.164.0 (October 23) as Latest, with ten numbered /presets slots and inline /model and /permissions arguments. New 0.165.0 and 0.166.0 alpha builds appeared on October 26 and 27 without release notes, so there is nothing to act on yet.

What to do this week

• Update Claude Code to 2.1.311, especially if you have large CLAUDE.md files, use subagents with MCP, or run on Bedrock, Vertex or Foundry.
• Try Copilot assisted permissions in a throwaway repo before enabling it for a team, and review your enterprise policy.
• Stay on Codex 0.164.0 stable until the 0.165 notes are published.

References

Claude Code v2.1.311 · Codex releases · Copilot assisted permissions · GPT-6.1 Terra in Copilot