x.com/ClaudeDevs/status/2111209208012210409
1 correction found
Claude Code now gzips the conversation it sends on every turn
Anthropic’s own release notes describe gzip as applying to large request bodies, not literally every turn. Their environment-variable reference also says compression is for large request bodies and is skipped in some configurations.
Full reasoning
Anthropic's official Claude Code v2.1.300 release notes say: "Changed large requests to api.anthropic.com to use gzip compression". That is narrower than saying Claude Code gzips the conversation "on every turn".
A Claude Code environment-variable reference mirrors that scope more explicitly: CLAUDE_CODE_GZIP_REQUEST_BODIES controls gzip compression of request bodies, and says Claude Code "compresses large request bodies" by default, with compression skipped in some setups (for example behind a proxy or with certain TLS/certificate configurations).
So the improvement is real, but the post overstates it: Anthropic's published documentation describes conditional compression of large request bodies, not universal compression on every turn.
2 sources
- Release v2.1.300 · anthropics/claude-code · GitHub
Changed large requests to api.anthropic.com to use gzip compression even when telemetry is disabled; set CLAUDE_CODE_GZIP_REQUEST_BODIES=0 to turn it off
- claude-code-docs/docs/env-vars.md at main · bartvanhoey/claude-code-docs · GitHub
CLAUDE_CODE_GZIP_REQUEST_BODIES | Set to 0 to turn off gzip compression of Claude API, telemetry, and artifact publish request bodies sent to api.anthropic.com... By default, Claude Code compresses large request bodies on direct connections and skips compression when you send requests through a proxy, configure a client certificate, or set NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS.