Claude Code version check

The goal is a recommendation: stay put, update, or pin to a specific version. Claude Code ships latest very frequently (often 1-2x/day), so "best version" is a moving target and the answer is usually a range, not a single build.

Heuristics (read first)

• stable lags latest and is NOT an LTS. The npm stable dist-tag is just a pointer that trails latest by a handful of patch releases. It can even sit behind an important fix release, so "stable" does not mean "most bugs fixed." Don't blindly recommend @stable.
• Quiet version = good sign. If nobody is complaining about a recent release, that's a positive signal. A loud pile-on about a specific build is the thing to avoid.
• Version comparisons are the strongest signal. Posts where people compare builds ("X broke Y, rolled back to Z") tell you exactly which release to avoid.
• Stay ~a day behind the bleeding edge. Avoid a release that's only a few hours old - let others surface same-day regressions first.
• But a same-day release is fine when the tracker is quiet and it fixes something you're carrying. If a few hours have passed with no cluster of issues, and the changelog shows it fixing a regression that's live in your installed range, taking it is usually better than waiting. Say plainly what you're trading: a few hours of field time instead of a day.
• The real lever is when you update, not stable-vs-latest. Default Claude Code auto-updates to latest constantly, which is how you drift onto a same-day regression.

1. What's installed vs what's published

claude --version
npm view @anthropic-ai/claude-code dist-tags --json

dist-tags shows latest, stable, and next. Compare against the installed version to see how far ahead/behind each pointer is.

Recent releases and their timestamps (to see how fast things are shipping):