Claude Code 2.1.316 retires fast mode on Opus 4.8 on November 30, adds pooled group budgets to its gateway and a separate effort setting for subagents
This release is about money and control: a deprecation with a firm deadline, plus gateway features that let admins budget by group and stack policies in layers.
// Key points
- Fast mode for Opus 4.8 is deprecated as of October 30 and will be removed on November 30; after that, fast mode requests on Opus 4.8 return an error instead of falling back to standard Opus 4.8, and the advice is to migrate to Opus 5.5.
- The Claude apps gateway adds pooled group budgets, one monthly budget shared by a group on top of each member's own limit, set with pooled_budget on the spend limits admin API, plus managed.policy_mode: layered, which merges every matching policy instead of only the first.
- Adds CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_EFFORT to set the effort subagents run at when nothing else names one, instead of inheriting the session's.
- Fixes the gateway not checking every model a request names, so a blocked model now gets a 400 naming the field, and fixes --restricted sessions uploading files from outside the working directories when a Read allow rule covered them.
Builder's takeThere is no fallback on the fast mode change, only an error after the deadline, so I would search configs and scripts for Opus 4.8 with fast mode now rather than on November 30. A separate effort level for subagents is a direct cost lever: turn it down a notch for lookup and tidy-up subtasks and leave the main session alone. Add pooled group budgets and it matches today's AWS cost playbook: spend control is moving into the gateway layer.
// Background · from #Coding agents
Full timeline →- Nov 1 AWS lays out an end-to-end Bedrock cost playbook: spend attributed to each IAM principal, over-budget users blocked in seconds to minutes, and more than half of coding-fleet calls on cheaper models
- Nov 1 Bedrock AgentCore Runtime adds session endpoints: preview a web app in your own browser while a coding agent edits it in the cloud
- Oct 31 Claude Code 2.1.314 adds a setting that blocks writes outside the working directories in every permission mode