Updating Claude Code

The extension drives the Claude Code CLI and never bundles it, so the CLI is updated separately from the extension. You can do that without leaving Visual Studio.

Two ways in

The notice in the chat. When a newer Claude Code exists, the first chat you open in a Visual Studio session says so at the top, with an Update button:

Claude Code 2.1.288 is available (you have 2.1.287)   [Update]

The row turns to Updating Claude Code... while it runs, then to the outcome, and stays until you close it.

The menu. View → cv4vs Agents → Update Claude Code, at any time, with or without a pane open. The status bar shows Updating Claude Code... while it runs, and the outcome comes in a message box. The entry is greyed while an update is under way.

The menu is there because the notice is easy to lose: it shows once per Visual Studio session, only in a chat (the CLI pane has none), and it is gone once you dismiss it.

Both do the same thing, and only one update runs at a time: asking again while one is under way joins it.

What it runs

claude update, on the binary the extension uses: the one set in Tools → Options → cv4vs Agents → General → Claude executable path, or the one it found by itself. Nothing else: the CLI decides how to update the install it belongs to.

Install	What claude update does
npm (npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code)	installs the new package with npm, which has to be on the PATH Visual Studio was started with
native installer	downloads and installs the new version itself
winget, or another package manager	does not update: it tells you the command to run, such as winget upgrade Anthropic.ClaudeCode, and the extension shows it to you

What you are told

The outcome is decided by asking the CLI for its version again afterwards, not by whether the command reported success: a CLI that is already current, and one owned by a package manager, both finish “successfully” without changing anything.

Outcome	What it means
Claude Code updated to X. Sessions already open keep Y until they are restarted.	the version changed
Claude Code was not updated (still X).	the CLI ran and the version is the same; its own text follows and says why
Claude Code update finished, but its version could not be read.	the CLI ran, and it did not answer --version afterwards
Claude Code update is still running after 5 minutes. It was left to finish: check the version later.	a slow download; the updater is not stopped half-way
Claude Code update failed.	the CLI reported an error; its own text follows, then Run `claude update` in a terminal to see the full output. In the chat the row has a View logs button that opens the Output window

The text after the first sentence is the CLI’s, unchanged. The message box shows up to 15 lines of it, one per row; the notice in the chat has room for one line, the cause of a failure or the conclusion of a report.

Sessions already open

They are left alone. On Windows a running program cannot be overwritten, so the updater sets the old binary aside and writes the new one beside it: a pane that was open keeps working on the version it started with.

A pane picks up the new version when its CLI process starts again: close the pane and open it again, or open a new one.

Two things follow from that:

• More → Info on a pane reports the version of the binary on disk, which after an update is the new one, even for a pane still running the old.
• Each update leaves the previous binary behind (about 240 MB) for as long as a session is still using it.

When it fails

• EBUSY: resource busy or locked (npm installs). A file from an earlier update is still in use by a session opened before it. Close the Claude Code sessions you no longer need, the oldest first, and update again. Nothing is damaged in the meantime: the install stays on the version it had.
• Unable to fetch latest version from npm registry. The CLI gives npm only a few seconds to answer. A machine that is busy, right after Visual Studio starts for instance, can miss that; trying again a little later is usually enough. Otherwise it is the network or a proxy.
• Nothing happens, or the message is not enough. Run claude update in a terminal: it prints everything. With the log level raised (Tools → Options → cv4vs Agents → Debug), the Output window pane cv4vs Agents records the run under the [cli] tag.

Where “a newer version exists” comes from

The notice compares your version with the latest tag of the npm package, the same thing npm install -g would give you. A native install set to follow the stable channel can therefore be told that a newer version exists while its own updater says it is up to date: both are right, they are looking at different channels.

The check runs each time a chat opens, until one of them has something to announce; from then on that Visual Studio session says no more. It asks the installed CLI for its version and the npm registry for the latest tag: the only network request the extension makes on its own. If the registry does not answer within five seconds, there is simply no notice.