[Bug] Environment Variable CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_OUTPUT_TOKENS Not Respected

[yannbam]

Bug Description CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_OUTPUT_TOKENS environment variable gets ignored

Environment Info

• Platform: linux
• Terminal: kitty
• Version: 1.0.120
• Feedback ID: ea5ee211-67b4-4ee4-933e-dfeca4f5c48e

[mkochco]

Have also seen this issue;

Environment Info

Platform: MacOS against AWS Bedrock (Opus 4.1) Terminal: IntelliJ Terminal Version: 1.0.120

 Claude Code v1.0.120
  L Session ID: 6c721f24-bd9b-4ccd-84dd-3f98811ec084

 Working Directory 
  L omitted

 IDE Integration • /config
  ✔  Connected to IntelliJ IDEA extension
  ⚠  Error installing IntelliJ IDEA plugin: Plugin source missing
     Please restart your IDE or try installing from https://docs.claude.com/s/claude-code-jetbrains

 API Configuration 
  L API Provider: AWS Bedrock
  L AWS Region: us-west-2

 Memory • /memory
  L project: CLAUDE.md

 Model • /model
  L arn:aws:bedrock:::inference-profile/us.anthropic.claude-opus-4-20250514-v1:0

  ⎿  API Error: 400 Input is too long for requested model.

> /compact 
  ⎿  Error: Error during compaction: Error: API Error: 400 input length and `max_tokens` exceed context limit: 202111 + 20000 > 204658, decrease input length or 
     `max_tokens` and try again

! echo $CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_OUTPUT_TOKENS
  ⎿  2048

[huangmenglong]

I encountered the same issue—the parameter settings are not taking effect

export CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_OUTPUT_TOKENS=50000

⎿ API Error: Claude's response exceeded the 32000 output token maximum. To configure this behavior, set the CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_OUTPUT_TOKENS environment variable. ⎿ Error writing file ⎿ API Error: Claude's response exceeded the 32000 output token maximum. To configure this behavior, set the CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_OUTPUT_TOKENS environment variable.

✶ Creating test script for test_case_19… (esc to interrupt · ctrl+t to show todos · 462s · ↓ 7.4k tokens) ⎿ Next: Create test script for test_case_20

[eware-godaddy]

I'm seeing this constantly with AWS: global.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0 too but not with the ENV var. Just out of the box.

[yannbam]

Interesting! These cases are actually the opposite of what i wanted to achieve: set max_tokens to 64000 so claude can produce longer outputs.

The current implementation seems like a unnecessary mess that's easily fixable:

• When the response stops because of max tokens => use that response instead of api error + deleting the response
• Dynamic max tokens: if the request + max_tokens exceeds context limit => reduce max_tokens to fit context limit

[github-actions[bot]]

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