This week in Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI (week of November 1, 2026)
Originally published at https://aicoding-guide.com . This week has a deadline in it . Fast mode for Opus 4.8 is deprecated as of 2026-10-30 and removed on 2026-11-30 . The CHANGELOG is specific that after removal, fast mode requests on Opus 4.8 return an error and do not fall back to standard Opus
Posted on Oct 31 • Originally published at aicoding-guide.com
Originally published at https://aicoding-guide.com.
This week has a deadline in it. Fast mode for Opus 4.8 is deprecated as of 2026-10-30 and removed on 2026-11-30. The CHANGELOG is specific that after removal, fast mode requests on Opus 4.8 return an error and do not fall back to standard Opus 4.8.
On the feature side, idle compaction spread to VS Code and the desktop app — two weeks after it arrived, terminal-only.
Four releases: 2.1.311, 2.1.312, 2.1.314 and 2.1.316.
The CHANGELOG reads: "Deprecated fast mode for Opus 4.8 as of October 30, 2026; it will be removed on November 30, 2026. After removal, fast mode requests on Opus 4.8 return an error and do not fall back to standard Opus 4.8. Migrate to Opus 5.5 to keep the speedup."
If a script or settings file assumes fast mode, move it to Opus 5.5 during November. After removal it does not quietly get slower — it errors.
It pairs with permissions.blockReadsOutsideWorkingDirectories on the read side. With both set, the reach of the file tools no longer depends on the permission mode.
"Added idle compaction to VS Code and Claude Desktop's Code tab: a 200K+ token conversation left idle is summarized, and the summary is used on your next message if the prompt cache has expired."
What landed in the terminal in 2.1.299 reached VS Code and the desktop Code tab two weeks later. For the conditions and how to turn it off, see Making Claude Code compact earlier, or never.
claude_code.safety_event stopped being sent after a week The claude_code.safety_event OpenTelemetry event added in v2.1.307 was withdrawn in v2.1.312: "Changed Claude Code to stop sending the claude_code.safety_event OpenTelemetry event." We covered it in last week's digest; it lasted a week. A dashboard built on that event needs rebuilding.
On security, --restricted sessions could upload files from outside the working directories when a Read allow rule covered them; that is fixed. Separately, for Team and Enterprise logins, server-managed settings fetched from Anthropic's API now apply without an approval prompt, and a stored copy that doesn't verify is refused.
v0.165.0 brought the Vertex AI provider and memories by default; see Codex CLI v0.165.
Two fixes stand out, both about resuming: acknowledged approval and permission settings are now preserved when resuming or forking threads, and reasoning-token accounting is preserved across resume and fork to avoid premature compaction.
v0.66.0 is 26 entries of fixes and chores with no features. The configuration-related ones:
A banner was also added saying Gemini CLI is not optimized for Gemini 4. For the previous release, see Gemini CLI v0.65 enforces read-only settings in untrusted folders.