/fork was redesigned to copy your current session into a new background session while you keep working, rather than spawning an in-session subagent. The old /fork behavior, where a subagent runs and reports back within your session, is now available as /subtask.
The behavioral changes to /fork and /subtask shipped in v2.1.212, with full documentation available in the official docs.
The /subtask command inherits the parent session's context window rather than starting fresh, clarifying a key behavioral difference from /fork.
/fork creates a separate background session and does not switch you into it or report back, while /branch is the right command if you want to switch into a new forked session, analogous to branching chats in the chat interface.
Newer versions of Claude Code automatically delete past sessions older than 30 days. Users who want to keep their history can override this by setting "cleanupPeriodDays" in ~/.claude/settings.json.
Jarred Sumner expresses discomfort with Claude Code's 30-day session deletion behavior, noting the likely motivation was users running out of disk space, and adding that the feature has existed for at least six months to a year.
Several FFmpeg developers received six free months of the Claude Max 20x plan through Anthropic's Claude for Open Source program. The access has already helped find missing backports for the upcoming FFmpeg 9.0 release.
