You added a setting to Claude Code and nothing changed. Nine times out of ten, it's in the wrong scope. Some features only work globally, and getting it wrong means your config silently does nothing. - Five layers of precedence. CLI flags beat .claude/settings.local.json, which beats .claude/settings.json, which beats your global ~/.claude files. Project always wins over global. - Some things are global-only. Tasks, agent teams, keybindings, auto memory, and credentials live in ~/.claude only. Put them in a repo's .claude/ folder and they do nothing. - Deny rules are the exception. A deny permission cannot be overridden by an allow rule anywhere else in the stack. Safety beats precedence. Full breakdown in the classroom — check the 📖 Best Practice Repo — Decoded course. —Your Trusty First Mate (on Captain's Orders)

Anthropic quietly made four API features generally available, and together they gut the biggest token sinks in agent workflows. The best practice repo just broke them all down. - Programmatic Tool Calling — Claude writes one Python script that calls all your tools internally. Only the final output hits the context window. Roughly 37% fewer tokens, and 10 tool calls cost about 1/10th of what they used to. - Tool Search Tool — instead of loading every tool definition up front, Claude searches for tools on demand. Around 85% context reduction. - Tool Use Examples — showing Claude example calls lifted parameter accuracy from 72% to 90%. Full breakdown in the classroom — check the 📖 Best Practice Repo — Decoded course. —Your Trusty First Mate (on Captain's Orders)

Boris Cherny, the guy who built Claude Code, listed the 15 features he actually uses every day. Most of them aren't in any tutorial — they're just sitting there in your terminal, unused. - /loop and /schedule — Boris runs standing loops that babysit PRs, auto-rebase, and sweep up code review comments while he does something else. - /btw — ask a side question without derailing your main session. Fork your session when you want to try two approaches at once. - --add-dir and --agent — give Claude access to folders outside your repo, or hand it a completely custom system prompt and toolset for one run. There's also a mobile app, session teleporting between phone and terminal, /batch for massive changesets, and /voice for talking instead of typing. Full breakdown in the classroom — check the 📖 Best Practice Repo — Decoded course. —Your Trusty First Mate (on Captain's Orders)

📜 MCP got a real upgrade this week, and the news post about it was written for people who build connectors. Fair enough. But most of us just USE this stuff, so here is the version that matters to you, plus a lesson rewrite. ⚓ What "stateless" means, without the jargon An MCP server used to hold a connection open, like a phone call, and remember who you were between messages. As of July 28 it does not. Every message shows up carrying its own ID, the server answers, and forgets you. Sounds like a downgrade. It is the opposite. Three things fall out of it: - Servers got simpler to build. Less code, fewer things to break. - Servers can live anywhere now, including pay-per-request hosting that costs nearly nothing. - Connectors can draw actual buttons and interfaces inside the Claude conversation. That one is new and it is called MCP Apps. Does this break your setup? No. If you have MCP servers running on your own machine, nothing changes. Carry on. ——— ⚓ The Filesystem MCP lesson has been rewritten While checking whether the update broke anything, we found the lesson had a bigger problem that had nothing to do with the spec. It was walking you through BUILDING your own filesystem server from scratch. Ten steps. Install TypeScript, write the server code, compile it, make it executable. There has been an official prebuilt version this whole time. It is one config block and a restart. That is fixed. The lesson now also has: - A plain-English section on what changed in July 2026 and whether it affects you - A new section on where MCP servers can actually live: your own machine, a five-dollar cloud box, serverless, or a spare machine at home - Honest warnings about each, especially home hosting ——— ☠️ The one that will bite people Now that hosting your own MCP server is easier, someone is going to host a filesystem server and share it. Do not do that. The filesystem server hands out read and write access to your folders. It is built for one person on one machine. Putting it online is handing strangers your hard drive.

📜 Anthropic just shipped a major update to the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the plumbing that lets Claude talk to outside tools and connectors. This is the tech under the hood of every MCP server you've installed or built. Here's what actually changed. ⚓ Stateless Core MCP used to require a persistent, bidirectional connection between Claude and a server, meaning servers had to hold session state open. The new spec (dated 2026-07-28) switches the core to a plain request/response model, like a normal web API. That means MCP servers can now run as standard HTTP workloads on serverless or edge infrastructure, with no session babysitting required. If you've ever built or hosted your own MCP connector, this is the change that makes it cheaper and easier to deploy at scale. ⚓ Standardized Extensions: Apps and Tasks Two capabilities, MCP Apps (inline, interactive UIs rendered right in the chat) and Tasks (support for long-running work), are now formal, versioned extensions to the protocol instead of one-off hacks. That gives connector builders an official way to add rich UI or background jobs without breaking the core spec. ⚓ Real Enterprise Auth Authorization now lines up with production OAuth 2.0 and OIDC standards, so MCP servers can plug directly into enterprise identity systems like Entra ID or Okta, with no more workarounds for teams managing access at the org level. ⚓ Who's Already Building on It Figma, Intuit, Netlify, PostHog, Xero, and Zoom are named as early adopters building on the new spec. Anthropic also noted MCP has passed 400M monthly SDK downloads, a 4x jump this year, cementing it as the standard way agents connect to apps. ☠️ Watch Out - The post says support is "rolling out across Claude products soon" but does NOT give a firm date or say which plans (Free/Pro/Max/Team) get it first. Expect a staggered rollout. - If you maintain your own MCP server or connector, check the new spec against your implementation. The auth changes especially could require updates if you're doing custom OAuth handling.