1.11.1: sessions start on an npm-global Claude Code (Windows)
As of 2026-07-26. Nothing to configure. No effect outside Windows.
What was broken
On Windows with an npm i -g Claude Code, a session exited the moment it started:
Error: Settings file not found: {"hooks:{UserPromptSubmit:[{hooks:[{type:command,command:curl
Nearly every quote had vanished from the --settings JSON. The cause was the receiving program: reading "" as one literal quote is a Microsoft C runtime extension, and claude.exe is a native binary that does not implement it.
--settings and --mcp-config are now written to a file and only the path is passed, so nothing claude launches with contains a quote at all. POSIX is untouched.
How to check
Start a session on Windows; if it keeps running, you have the fix.
The diagnosis is recorded because the first attempt at it was wrong. The CI test that had passed was itself the reason it took two rounds: it read the parsed argv of its child, and its child was node.exe — the most forgiving argv parser on Windows. The one assumption it never checked was its own stand-in for the real target.