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Update, 2026-08-08: Ultraplan has been discontinued. Anthropic removed the Ultraplan research preview in Claude Code v2.1.222 on August 4, 2026 (“Removed ultraplan feature”), and the feature’s documentation page now confirms it “is no longer available,” pointing builders instead to local plan mode or Claude Code on the web for cloud sessions. The rest of this article is kept as a record of how Ultraplan worked during its roughly four-month research preview (it first appeared in changelogs in April 2026); treat any “now available” language below as describing that window, not the current product.
Claude Code briefly had a new “ultra” prefix feature alongside Ultrareview. Ultraplan took a planning task from your terminal, ran it in a Claude Code on the web session, and delivered a structured plan to a browser editor where you could review, comment, and choose how to execute — while your local terminal stayed free. Here is what builders needed to know while it was live.
What Ultraplan Actually Does
A normal Claude Code planning run happens locally in your terminal window. It uses whatever model is currently active, competes with your other terminal work for attention, and produces output inline. If you step away, the context is idle.
Ultraplan broke that coupling. When you triggered it:
- Claude Code handed the task to the cloud, spinning up a session on Claude Code on the web infrastructure (
claude.ai/code). Your local terminal polled for status but was otherwise free — the general “hand off to a cloud VM, keep working locally” pattern that Claude Code’s--cloudflag still uses today. - The remote session cloned your repo from GitHub and generated a structured plan: steps, dependencies, and expected changes. Independent reporting at the time noted this meant local edits made after launch weren’t visible to the plan — the same point-in-time-clone limitation Claude Code’s cloud sessions document generally.
- The plan landed in a browser editor at
claude.ai/code, where you could read the structured plan, add inline comments, and request revisions before approving — matching how cloud-session diff review still works on the current platform. - You chose where to execute — a decision point reported at launch as a choice between continuing in the terminal or in the cloud.
Anthropic did not publish the specific model or time-budget numbers for Ultraplan sessions on a page we could independently verify at audit time (the original docs page has since been replaced with the removal notice, and no archived copy was reachable). Several third-party blog posts from spring 2026 cite a 30-minute cap and an Opus 4.6 backend, but those claims trace back to the same handful of syndicated posts rather than an Anthropic source we could confirm directly, so we’re not repeating the specific numbers here.
Three Plan Variants (You Don’t Choose)
Ultraplan reportedly ran one of three internally distinct plan variants, assigned automatically rather than by user choice, according to independent reporting at launch:
| Variant | What it produces |
|---|---|
| Simple Plan | A basic mode mirroring local planning, for straightforward or smaller tasks |
| Visual Plan | Steps plus diagrams for system relationships |
| Deep Plan | Uses subagents for multi-perspective analysis, including risk assessment and architecture review; slower, most thorough |
We could not confirm the exact assignment mechanism (some accounts described it as automatic routing based on task complexity) against an Anthropic-published source, and Anthropic never documented it publicly as far as we could find. There was no user-facing flag to request a specific variant.
How to Enable and Trigger
Requirements (confirmed by independent reporting at launch):
- Claude Code v2.1.91 or later
- A Claude Code on the web account: Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise
- Repository hosted on GitHub (GitLab and Bitbucket are not supported) — consistent with Claude Code on the web’s general platform restriction that repository cloning and PR creation require GitHub
- Did not work on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, or Microsoft Foundry deployments — the same three-provider exclusion documented for Ultrareview and cloud sessions generally
Three trigger methods — the /ultraplan command and the “Refine with Ultraplan” plan-mode option are both directly confirmed in Anthropic’s own Claude Code changelog (search the file for “ultraplan”; e.g. “Improved plan mode to hide the ‘Refine with Ultraplan’ option when the user’s org or auth setup can’t reach Claude Code on the web”); the keyword-detection trigger is corroborated by independent reporting at launch:
/ultraplan <your prompt>— explicit command, cleanest control- Include the word “ultraplan” anywhere in a normal prompt — Claude detected the intent
- At the end of a local plan, when Claude showed the approval dialog, choosing to refine the draft with Ultraplan on Claude Code on the web sent it to the cloud for expansion
We could not verify the exact claude ultraplan --enable-preview enable command against a live Anthropic source (the feature is now removed), so we’ve dropped it here rather than risk publishing an incorrect command.
The Web Editor
Once the cloud session finished, the plan appeared in a structured browser editor at claude.ai/code. Reported key features included:
- Inline comments — attach notes to specific steps
- Revision requests — ask the plan to be rewritten before approving
- Approve or reject — gate execution on your explicit sign-off
This was the human-in-the-loop gate. For teams, the browser link was shareable — multiple engineers could review and comment asynchronously before anyone triggered execution, matching how session sharing still works on Claude Code on the web today.
After Approval: Execution Options
The article’s original claim of exactly three named “execute locally / execute remotely / start fresh” paths could not be re-verified against a live Anthropic source. The most detailed independent account we found instead describes returning (“teleporting”) the approved plan to the terminal, where you could inject it into your current conversation, start a fresh session using only the plan as context, or save it to a file for later — consistent with how --teleport still works for cloud sessions generally. You could also leave execution running in the cloud session itself rather than pulling it to the terminal. Given the conflicting secondary accounts and no primary source left to check, treat the exact mechanics here as approximate rather than exact.
Hard Limitations
Point-in-time snapshot. Reported at launch: the cloud session cloned your repo from GitHub when you launched Ultraplan. Changes made locally afterward weren’t visible to the planning session — the same point-in-time-clone behavior documented for --cloud sessions generally (“push first if you have local commits, since the VM clones from GitHub rather than your machine”).
GitHub only. No GitLab, no Bitbucket, no local-only repos with full functionality — consistent with Claude Code on the web’s documented platform restrictions.
Remote Control conflict. Reported at launch: Ultraplan and Claude Code’s Remote Control feature both used the claude.ai/code interface and could not run simultaneously; launching Ultraplan disconnected any active Remote Control session.
No third-party provider support. Bedrock, Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry deployments could not use Ultraplan — the same restriction documented for Ultrareview and cloud sessions on those providers today.
We’re not repeating a specific session time-cap number here; see the note above on why.
Ultraplan vs Ultrareview
Both carried the “ultra” prefix and both offloaded heavy compute to Anthropic’s cloud, but they served different phases. Unlike Ultraplan, Ultrareview (/code-review ultra) is still live as of this update: it “launches a fleet of reviewer agents in a remote sandbox” and, compared to a local review, offers “higher signal” because “every reported finding is independently reproduced and verified,” plus broader coverage from a larger parallel agent fleet — not the specific “Security + Performance + Maintainability” track split this article previously claimed, which we could not find in Anthropic’s own description and have removed.
| Feature | Purpose | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Ultraplan (discontinued Aug 2026) | Cloud-based planning: generated a structured execution plan | Before implementation, when planning is the hard part |
| Ultrareview | Multi-agent code review in a remote sandbox with independently verified findings | After implementation, to find real bugs before merging |
They were complementary. A natural workflow: Ultraplan before a big refactor → implement locally → Ultrareview when done. With Ultraplan gone, the planning half of that workflow now runs through plan mode or Claude Code on the web instead.
Builder Decision Table (Historical)
This table reflects when Ultraplan was worth reaching for while it existed; it’s no longer actionable since the feature is discontinued, but it’s kept for context on the workflow tradeoffs.
| Situation | Use Ultraplan? |
|---|---|
| Migration affecting 20+ files across multiple services | Yes — planning is the hard part |
| Architectural decision with multiple valid approaches | Yes — Deep Plan may surface tradeoffs you’d miss |
| Team needs async plan review before execution | Yes — shareable browser link is the key feature |
| You want terminal free while planning runs in background | Yes — the primary value proposition |
| Quick 3-file refactor you already understand | No — local plan is faster |
| Repo on GitLab or Bitbucket | No — not supported |
| Bedrock / Vertex / Foundry deployment | No — not supported |
| Your local working tree has uncommitted changes that matter | No — cloud session won’t see them |
| Active Remote Control session | No — conflict; pick one |
Action Items (Historical — Ultraplan Is Discontinued)
Ultraplan itself can no longer be enabled; the items below describe what mattered while it was live, kept for reference rather than as current instructions:
- Claude Code v2.1.91+ and a paid Claude Code on the web account (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise) were required
- A real planning task, not a toy refactor, was where the cloud hand-off paid off
- Sharing the browser link let a team review a plan asynchronously before execution
- Committing and pushing local state before triggering Ultraplan mattered, since the cloud session only saw what was on GitHub
What to use instead today: local plan mode for in-terminal planning with approval before edits, or Claude Code on the web to run a full session in the cloud and review changes in your browser. Ultrareview remains available for the post-implementation review half of the workflow this article originally described.