Claude Code 2.1.129 adds --plugin-url and fixes cache TTL to 5 minutes

• ClaudeCodeLog's release post and the official changelog show Claude Code 2.1.129 shipped 27 CLI changes, led by --plugin-url <url> for session-only installs from a remote .zip.
• According to ClaudeCodeLog's full changelog post, skillOverrides is working again, gateway /v1/models discovery is no longer automatic, and Ctrl+R now searches prompt history across all projects by default.
• The most consequential bug fix in ClaudeCodeLog's full changelog post reset a prompt cache TTL that had been silently falling from 1 hour to 5 minutes.
• ClaudeCodeLog's additional updates adds two unreleased-looking model slugs, claude-empty-D and claude-mythos-preview, plus six new environment variables in the CLI surface diff.

You can read the official changelog, skim the community changelog mirror release, and inspect the CLI surface diff. The mirror also exposes prompt-stat changes that do not appear in Anthropic's own notes.

The headline feature is small and useful: --plugin-url <url> fetches a plugin .zip directly for the current session, instead of requiring a local directory. Anthropic's official changelog frames it as a session-scoped install, which makes this more like a fast test harness than a new persistent plugin manager.

The same release also changes plugin manifests. The official changelog says themes and monitors now belong under "experimental", while top-level declarations still load but trigger claude plugin validate warnings.

Three workflow defaults moved in one patch:

• Gateway /v1/models discovery for the /model picker is now opt-in through CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_GATEWAY_MODEL_DISCOVERY=1, after being automatic in 2.1.126 through 2.1.128, per the official changelog.
• Ctrl+R now starts by searching prompts across all projects again, with Ctrl+S narrowing back to the current project or session, according to ClaudeCodeLog's full changelog post.
• Third-party deployments on Bedrock, Vertex, Foundry, or custom ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL gateways no longer get spinner tips that point back to Anthropic surfaces, per the official changelog.

ClaudeCodeLog's teaser post went up about eight hours before the release landed, and ClaudeCodeLog's additional updates pegs the gap from 2.1.128 to 2.1.129 at 8 hours, 1 minute, 14 seconds.

The release notes bury the sharpest fix in the middle of a long bug list: the 1 hour prompt cache TTL had been silently dropping to 5 minutes. LLMpsycho's summary post called that one out explicitly, and the official changelog confirms it.

Several other fixes hit long-running sessions and agent ergonomics:

• /context stopped dumping its ASCII visualization grid into the conversation, which ClaudeCodeLog's full changelog post says was wasting about 1.6K tokens per call.
• The agent panel hidden-while-subagents-run regression from 2.1.122 is fixed, per ClaudeCodeLog's full changelog post.
• OAuth refresh after wake-from-sleep no longer logs out every running session, according to the official changelog.
• Policy refusal messages now include the API Request ID, which ClaudeCodeLog's release post highlights as a tracing and support debugging improvement.

The changelog mirror exposes extra surface area Anthropic did not spell out in the official note. ClaudeCodeLog's additional updates lists six environment variables added at once: CLAUDE_BG_STARTUP_WEDGE_MS, CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_GATEWAY_MODEL_DISCOVERY, CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_OPUS_4_7_FAST_MODE, CLAUDE_CODE_FORCE_SYNC_OUTPUT, CLAUDE_CODE_LOOP_PERSISTENT, and CLAUDE_CODE_PACKAGE_MANAGER_AUTO_UPDATE.

That same diff also adds claude-empty-D and claude-mythos-preview, while removing claude-empty-, according to the CLI surface diff. The mirror's prompt stats diff says prompt files rose from 76 to 79 and prompt tokens rose by 8,894, or 9.8%, with system-reminder tokens taking a bigger share of the mix.