[FEATURE] Publish a machine-readable, versioned reference for settings keys and per-surface commands
Preflight Checklist
- [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
- [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)
Problem Statement
When I ask an assistant — Claude included — for help configuring Claude Code, it answers from training data and blog posts. Both go stale within weeks, and there is no authoritative source it can check instead. Today this cost me an afternoon.
Claude recommended disableRemoteControl for my settings.json. The key comes from third-party configuration guides. It is not valid in 2.1.240. Claude Code accepted the file silently, started normally, and then froze on input. No error at startup, nothing from claude doctor. I filed that freeze separately — but the wrong recommendation happened first, and it happened because no version-accurate list of valid keys exists that a tool can read.
Same pattern with commands. Claude told me to run /status in the Claude Code window inside Claude Desktop. The response: "/status is not a known command here. Some commands only work in the Claude Code terminal." The docs state that terminal, IDE extensions, and the desktop app all read the same settings files, but say nothing about which commands exist on which surface.
Neither mistake was carelessness on the model's part. There was no source to check. Prose documentation at code.claude.com is written for humans reading a page, not for a tool resolving "is this key valid in the version this user is running."
Proposed Solution
Publish, per release, at a stable URL:
Settings key reference. Every valid settings.json key with type, allowed values, scope, and the version it was introduced or removed in. A JSON Schema already exists for editor autocompletion — expose it versioned and fetchable rather than only editor-side.
Command surface matrix. Which slash commands are available in which surface: terminal CLI, VS Code extension, JetBrains extension, Claude Desktop's Code window, claude.ai/code, mobile.
Behavioral change log. Machine-readable entries for changes in observable behavior, not just features. Example from my own week: whether a Remote Control session survives closing the terminal. The docs say it ends. On 2.1.237 it did not — a daemon (claude.exe daemon run --origin transient) kept sessions alive past the shell that spawned them.
Two things follow directly. An assistant can fetch the schema for the user's actual version instead of guessing. And Claude Code itself can validate settings.json against it and reject unknown keys with a clear message — which would have prevented the freeze entirely.
The core ask is narrow: make the configuration surface machine-readable and version-pinned. The docs site can stay exactly as it is.
And I'm fairly confident an AI could handle the busywork of keeping this in sync. I hear there's one available.
Alternative Solutions
_No response_
Priority
Critical - Blocking my work
Feature Category
CLI commands and flags
Use Case Example
_No response_
Additional Context
_No response_