Claude Desktop Release Notes: v1.3.12+claude1.1.3541 → v1.3.12+claude1.1.3647

Executive Summary

This release (build 1.1.3647, commit 8f7c53e0, 2026-02-19) advances Claude Desktop by 106 build numbers in roughly 20 hours, primarily delivering a new Auto permission mode, an OpenTelemetry forwarding subsystem for VM-hosted environments, and DXT extension manifest schema versioning. Several behavioral bugs were also fixed, including a system prompt hook that was silently discarding its output and a session query that was incorrectly filtering out archived sessions.

Changes by Category

New Features

PermissionMode.Auto ("auto")

A new auto permission mode has been introduced throughout the permission system — added to enums, Zod validation schemas, settings file parsing, and worktree subprocess inheritance logic. Non-Nest (non-enterprise/nested) builds explicitly reject Auto mode with a warning rather than silently applying it, suggesting this mode is gated to specific deployment contexts.

OpenTelemetry Forwarding for VM-Hosted Environments

A new subsystem was added to forward OpenTelemetry telemetry when Claude Desktop is running inside a VM:

• getVMHostIP / replaceLocalhostWithVMHost: Rewrites OTLP collector URLs from localhost to the VM host gateway IP so telemetry can escape the VM.
• buildOTLPEnvVars: Injects a full OTEL_* environment variable block into spawned Claude Code subprocesses, including OTEL_LOG_USER_PROMPTS=1.
• appendOTLPHostToEgressAllowlist: Automatically permits OTLP traffic through the egress filter.
• The allowedDomains computation in local agent sessions became async to accommodate this.

DXT Extension Manifest Schema Versioning

The DXT extension manifest schema was restructured to support multiple versions:

• The "current" active schema was rolled back to v0.2, dropping fields for icons, localization, privacy_policies, _meta; removing uv as a valid server runtime; making mcp_config required; removing .passthrough().
• Separate v0.3 and v0.4 schemas were introduced to handle older manifests that use those formats.

Bug Fixes

Hooks System Prompt Content Not Delivered

Hooks-generated system prompt content was being computed but never actually forwarded to sessionOptions.systemPrompt.append. This is now fixed — hook-generated content will correctly appear in the session system prompt.

Plugin Schema Validation Gate

Schema validation is now performed as a gate before accepting scanned remote or installed plugins. Previously, plugins could be accepted without validating their schema.

getSessionsForScheduledTask Missing Archived Sessions

getSessionsForScheduledTask was incorrectly filtering out archived sessions. It now returns archived sessions as well, making scheduled task session lookups complete.

MCP Server Node Version Compatibility Check

A Node.js version compatibility check was added to the MCP server pipeline, preventing mismatched Node versions from silently causing failures.

Preview Tools System Prompt Hardened

Claude is now explicitly instructed in the system prompt to never use "Claude in Chrome" MCP tools for verifying in-app preview content, since those tools target a separate browser instance and would produce incorrect results.

sendMessage / mcpCallTool Parameter Order

The 3rd and 4th parameters of sendMessage and mcpCallTool IPC methods were reordered to reflect a corrected API contract on the main-process side. This is a coordinated change across the IPC boundary.

Refactors / Internal Changes

IPC Channel UUID Rotation

Every IPC channel name's embedded security UUID was rotated from 71ccaa7e-90b5-4a18-9b8b-fe9e5261c689 to df41ea1f-f17e-4da3-be44-88100ea9a5f4. This is a breaking protocol version bump that ensures renderer and main processes must be from the same build. Old and new builds cannot cross-communicate.

Minifier Variable Rename Pass (Zod Library)

The bundled Zod schema validation library underwent a complete minifier re-identifier pass throughout mainView.js. Identifiers such as ZodType base class (h→b), addIssueToContext (d→c), INVALID sentinel (b→p), and many local variables were reassigned new short names. No behavioral changes.

Dependency Updates

claude-agent-sdk-future Prerelease Bumped

The experimental "future" shadow SDK alias was advanced from 0.2.40-dev (2026-02-11, commit cdef40b) to 0.2.47-dev (2026-02-18, commit 726c633) — 7 minor versions and one week of development. The stable claude-agent-sdk pin (0.2.45) is unchanged; only the canary/feature-flag code path is affected.

VM Rootfs and Initrd Checksums Updated

Binary checksums for VM rootfs and initrd images were updated to new versions, indicating updated VM base images are being shipped with this build.

Build / Config Changes

Confidence Assessment

Wrapper/Packaging Changes

The following commits were made to the build wrapper and packaging between v1.3.12+claude1.1.3541 and v1.3.12+claude1.1.3647:

• Update Claude Desktop download URLs to version 1.1.3647 (881744a)
• docs: add IliyaBrook to contributor acknowledgments (e0bf73c)