Strategic infrastructure construction in China is currently being intensified towards the complex mountainous regions in the western part of the country. During the construction of deep, long mountain tunnels, active reinforcement measures are routinely implemented to ensure construction safety and structural stability when unfavorable geological conditions are encountered. Among these measures, anchor bolt reinforcement is widely regarded as a prevalent and effective protective measure. To enable rapid assessment of the ultimate bearing capacity of anchor bolts under tensile conditions and to improve conventional limit-analysis-based stability assessment methods for tunnel faces reinforced with anchor bolts, a novel numerical approach integrating the Von-Mises yield criterion with the ECM (elastic compensation method) was developed. The coordinate transformation methodology for expressing the Von-Mises yield surface in the principal stress space using Haigh-Westergaard coordinates was systematically described. Critical iterative techniques for implementing ECM on this yield surface were thoroughly elucidated. Secondary development of the commercial finite element software ABAQUS was carried out using Python programming, thereby enabling the automated evaluation of the ultimate capacity of anchor bolts through structural limit analysis. Subsequently, the conventional limit analysis method for tunnel face stability assessment was refined through the incorporation of structural limit analysis. The research results demonstrate that the improved method is highly automated, with a stable and reliable iterative calculation process. It is revealed that the effectiveness of anchor bolt reinforcement is significantly greater in weaker strata. Moreover, safety factors are shown to be notably sensitive to variations in stratum strength parameters.