launching-claude

name	launching-claude
description	Use when the user wants Claude Code to launch with privacy-friendly defaults (hidden account email/org, --rc, --effort max, --model 'claude-opus-4-8[1m]') for a specific repo. Creates an executable `claude.sh` at the repo root so the user runs `./claude.sh` locally — no shell aliases, no symlinks, no $PATH changes.

Launching Claude

Drops an executable ./claude.sh at the root of the user's current repo. They run it with ./claude.sh from that repo.

What to do

Run the plugin's installer from the root of the user's current repo:

"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/install-launcher.sh"

That copies ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/claude.sh to ./claude.sh and marks it executable. It refuses to overwrite an existing ./claude.sh — if one is already there, confirm with the user that replacing it is intended, then rm ./claude.sh before re-running.

Prefer a single invocation of install-launcher.sh over an inline cp && chmod composite: a single scripted path is easier for the user's permission allowlist to match.

What the launcher does

exec env IS_DEMO=1 claude --rc --effort max --model 'claude-opus-4-8[1m]' "$@"

• IS_DEMO=1 — undocumented Anthropic env var that hides the account email and organization from the welcome banner. Confirmed live in v2.1.116. Side effect: skips first-run onboarding prompts.
• --rc — hidden CLI flag.
• --effort max — deepest reasoning level.
• --model 'claude-opus-4-8[1m]' — pins to Opus 4.8 with the 1M-token context window. The [1m] suffix is the Claude Code opt-in for the long-context variant; the value is single-quoted so the shell doesn't try to glob the brackets.

Extra arguments pass through, so the launcher is a drop-in for claude: ./claude.sh -c, ./claude.sh "do the thing", ./claude.sh --worktree, etc.

Plugin auto-update

The launcher refreshes marketplace-installed plugins before exec'ing claude, throttled to at most once per hour via ~/.claude/.last-plugin-update. Updates run before the exec, so they take effect on this same launch (the exec is the "restart required to apply" the claude plugin update help text mentions).

Coverage:

• User-scope plugins (the default install scope) — always updated.
• Project-scope plugins for the project the launcher was invoked from — updated only when jq is installed (used to filter out other projects' installs from claude plugin list). Without jq, the launcher silently falls back to user-scope-only via the human-readable list parser.
• --plugin-dir locals are NOT touched. Claude Code reads those from disk at every launch, so they're current with whatever the filesystem holds. Refresh them via git pull in your normal flow, or use /reload-plugins mid-session.

Force a refresh on the next launch:

rm ~/.claude/.last-plugin-update

To change the throttle window, edit THROTTLE_SECONDS in the installed ./claude.sh (default: $((60 * 60))).

Caveats

• IS_DEMO is undocumented. A future Claude Code release could rename or remove it, and the launcher will silently stop hiding the banner until the script is updated.
• --rc is a hidden flag; Anthropic may change it without notice.
• --effort max is token-expensive — for routine work on a metered plan, prefer high.
• Do not run ./claude.sh from inside an active Claude Code session; nesting claude is not supported.
• The repo-local copy does not auto-update when the plugin's canonical launcher changes. If the template gets updated, re-run the skill to re-copy.
• The plugin auto-update is best-effort and silent on failure (network blip, marketplace unreachable, scope mismatch). Watch the launcher's stderr if you suspect an update isn't landing.
• Project-scope coverage requires jq. The fallback updates user-scope plugins only.