Claude Code 2.1.85/2.1.86: Enterprise Policy Fragments and Conditional Hooks
Claude Code versions 2.1.85 and 2.1.86 deliver a cluster of enterprise and developer productivity improvements. The most significant for team deployments is the managed-settings.d/ drop-in directory. Administrators can now deploy independent JSON policy fragments into this directory — each fragment is merged alphabetically into the effective settings, so separate policies for MCP server allowlists, plugin controls, and permission rules can be maintained and deployed independently without editing a single monolithic settings file. Plugins blocked in managed-settings.json are now also hidden and uninstallable in the UI, preventing users from circumventing policies through the plugin browser.
Conditional hooks are another substantial addition: the if field on a hook entry filters when that hook fires, using the same permission rule syntax already used in permissions.allow (e.g., Bash(git *)). Previously, every hook ran on every matching event; conditional hooks eliminate unnecessary process spawns and reduce the overhead of hook-heavy configurations. The TaskCreated hook fires when a task is created via TaskCreate, and WorktreeCreate hooks can now return a worktree path via hookSpecificOutput.worktreePath over HTTP, enabling external orchestration systems to track worktree locations.
For individual developers, the most visible improvements are transcript search (/ in transcript mode, n/N to step through matches) and image reference placeholders ([Image #N] inserted on paste, allowing positional references in prompts). The /fork command has been renamed to /branch, the Ctrl+F shortcut for stopping background agents has moved to Ctrl+X Ctrl+K to avoid shadowing readline's forward-char, and TaskOutput is deprecated in favour of Read on background task output files.
Read more — Anthropic / GitHub
GitHub Copilot Agentic Capabilities Reach GA in JetBrains IDEs
GitHub Copilot's core agentic capabilities reached general availability in JetBrains IDEs as of March 11, 2026. The GA release brings custom agents, sub-agents, and the plan agent to IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, and the broader JetBrains product line — the same feature set that has been available in VS Code since Copilot's Agent Mode announcement earlier this year.
The JetBrains GA release also ships agent hooks in preview and auto-approve support for MCP, enabling Copilot agents in JetBrains IDEs to trigger tools in connected MCP servers without prompting for each individual tool call. This brings JetBrains users to feature parity with VS Code for agentic workflows, closing a gap that had pushed some JetBrains developers toward Cursor or Claude Code when they needed agent-level automation.
The rollout completes GitHub Copilot's transition to an agentic product across all major IDE families. With VS Code, Visual Studio, and JetBrains all at GA for agent mode, the remaining surface area is the CLI and the GitHub.com web interface, where Copilot's Jira integration (also launched in March 2026) adds ticket-to-code context directly in the IDE.
Read more — GitHub
IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1: JetBrains Console and Code With Me Unbundled
IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 GA, released in March 2026, includes two organisational changes that affect teams beyond the core Java and Kotlin improvements. The JetBrains Console is a new management dashboard that gives team leads and administrators visibility into how their teams use AI features in practice: active users, credit consumption, and acceptance rates for AI-generated code suggestions. This fills an observability gap that enterprise customers have reported since AI coding assistance became widespread — it is now possible to understand actual adoption and ROI from AI features without relying on anecdotal reports.
Code With Me, JetBrains' collaborative coding tool, will be unbundled from all JetBrains IDEs starting with 2026.1. The feature is available as a separate plugin on JetBrains Marketplace, but it will no longer ship by default. JetBrains cited the specialised nature of the use case as the rationale — most developers never activate Code With Me, and the bundled installation added size and startup overhead for all users. Teams that rely on Code With Me for pair programming or code review sessions should install the plugin before upgrading.
The release also introduces jetbrainsd, a lightweight background service that handles jetbrains:// protocol deep links from documentation and external tools, opening them directly in the IDE without requiring the JetBrains Toolbox App to be running. This removes a common friction point for developers who prefer not to run Toolbox but still want deep-link navigation to work.
Read more — JetBrains Blog
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