[BUG] plansDirectory setting not respected at the global level

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

I've set plansDirectory globally and it's not used by plan mode which uses the default plans directory at ~/.claude/plans.

~/.claude$ head -10 settings.json
{
  "cleanupPeriodDays": 3650,
  "plansDirectory": "/path/to/google/drive/Claude/plans",
....

Plans are still written to ~/.claude/plans. I've not set plansDirectory in any project-level Claude config.

What Should Happen?

When entering plan mode, it should read the Claude settings plansDirectory setting and write plans to /path/to/google/drive/Claude/plans.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

1. Set plansDirectory to something unique in your ~/.claude/settings.json.
2. Start claude and go into plan mode
3. Create a simple plan
4. Notice the plan is written to ~/.claude/plans` not your setting.

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

2.1.206 (Claude Code)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that plans are deleted from ~/.claude/plans on a monthly basis. You can see I've also set "cleanupPeriodDays": 3650 so it never cleans up my conversations or plans. I lost a few months worth of plans which held key decisions related to my work due to this problem. As a work-around, I've added context in my global CLAUDE.md telling Claude where to put plans and added a pre-tool hook so if it starts to write plans to ~/.claude/plans it will be stopped and return the correct directory.