Claude Code: /doctor Becomes a Full Setup Checkup
Claude CodeClaude Code's /doctor command, previously a read-only diagnostic report, now actively fixes problems it finds, and gained the alias /checkup. Running it can clean up unused skills, MCP servers, and plugins to save context, deduplicate a local CLAUDE.md against a checked-in one, split an oversized root CLAUDE.md into nested files and skills, disable slow hooks, update Claude Code, enable auto mode, and pre-approve frequently denied read-only commands — always asking for confirmation before making changes. A follow-up release a day later (v2.1.206) extended the same command with a check that proposes trimming checked-in CLAUDE.md files by cutting content Claude can already derive from the codebase itself.
Sources & Mentions
4 external resources covering this update
From Report to Repair
For most of its life, /doctor told developers what was wrong with their Claude Code setup and left the fixing to them. As of v2.1.205, it does both. The command still checks installation type (npm global, local, or native), config file validity for MCP servers, auto-update status, and sandbox availability — but it now also acts on what it finds, with /checkup added as a friendlier alias for the same command.
What It Cleans Up
Run against a real project, /doctor can now flag and remove unused skills, MCP servers, and plugins that are quietly consuming context on every turn. It checks a project's local CLAUDE.md for content that duplicates what's already checked into version control and offers to deduplicate it. For teams whose root CLAUDE.md has grown unwieldy, it can propose breaking it apart into nested, directory-scoped CLAUDE.md files and skills — a structure that keeps instructions closer to the code they describe instead of front-loading everything into one large file. It can also turn off hooks that are measurably slowing sessions down, trigger an update to the latest Claude Code build, switch on auto mode, and pre-approve read-only commands that keep getting denied by the permission system. None of this happens silently: /doctor confirms before applying any change.
A Same-Week Extension
The very next release, v2.1.206, added a further /doctor check specifically aimed at bloated CLAUDE.md files: it now proposes trimming content that Claude could already infer by reading the codebase directly, rather than having it spelled out in the instructions file. Combined with the nested-file restructuring from v2.1.205, this gives /doctor a genuinely useful role in keeping a project's steering documents lean rather than letting them grow indefinitely as a repo evolves.
Why It Matters
Every long-running Claude Code user eventually accumulates cruft — half-used plugins, a CLAUDE.md that's drifted out of sync with the actual codebase, hooks that were useful once and now just add latency. Turning /doctor into an active cleanup tool, rather than a command that only produces a list of problems, removes a chunk of manual maintenance that previously required a developer to notice something was slow or bloated and go fix it by hand.