TL;DR

• "Default" permission mode is now called "Manual." CLI flags, --help, VS Code, and JetBrains all say "Manual" now; --permission-mode manual and "defaultMode": "manual" are accepted alongside default, so existing configs still work but scripts referencing the old name in user-facing text should update.

• AskUserQuestion dialogs no longer auto-continue by default. If you relied on idle timeouts to keep unattended sessions moving, opt back in via /config.

• Left arrow no longer closes the background tasks, diff, or workflow detail views. Press Esc instead. Muscle memory adjustment.

• /review <pr> is a fast single-pass again (more below). For multi-agent review at a chosen effort level, use /code-review <level> <pr#>.

• Stacked slash-skill invocations now work. /skill-a /skill-b do XYZ loads all leading skills (up to 5), not just the first.

New in 2.1.204, 2.1.203, 2.1.202, 2.1.201, 2.1.200, 2.1.199

2.1.204 (July 8, 2026)

• Fixed hook events not streaming during SessionStart hooks in headless sessions, which could cause remote workers to be idle-reaped mid-hook

2.1.203 (July 8, 2026)

• Added a warning when your login is about to expire, so you can re-authenticate before background sessions are interrupted
• Added a grey pause badge to the footer when in manual permission mode, making the active mode always visible
• Added the session's additional working directories to MCP roots/list, with notifications/roots/list_changed sent when the set changes
• Fixed opening or switching background agent sessions on macOS stalling for 15-20 seconds due to a false low-memory detection (regression in 2.1.196)
• Fixed background sessions becoming permanently unresponsive to attach, replies, and stop when the daemon's session token went stale, the session now recovers automatically
• Fixed returning to claude agents silently stopping running subagents and re-running the prompt from scratch, their work now carries over
• Fixed a memory and per-turn CPU regression in interactive sessions: the context-usage indicator no longer re-analyzes the entire transcript after every turn
• Fixed background agents inheriting a stale PATH from the daemon instead of the dispatching shell, causing missing tools on Windows
• Fixed background and agent-view sessions dropping a shell-exported ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, which sent API keys to the default endpoint and failed with 401
• Fixed Bash failing with "argument list too long" in repos with many git worktrees
• Fixed worktree-isolated subagents sometimes running shell commands in the parent checkout instead of their own worktree
• Fixed worktree creation rejecting nested repositories in multi-repo workspaces, leaving background sessions unable to isolate and edit
• Fixed background agents crash-looping when their working directory was deleted, replaced by a file, or became an invalid path, they now fail once with a clear error
• Fixed a background daemon auto-upgrade failure silently killing all running background sessions
• Fixed TaskStop and TaskOutput failing to find background agents spawned by another agent, errors now list running agents by id and description
• Fixed the claude agents composer discarding your typed message when a slash command isn't available there
• Fixed the agent list crashing when opening a stopped session whose conversation was already open in another session
• Fixed background sessions showing "Needs input" in the agent list after the question was already answered
• Fixed background agent startup failures showing only "exit_with_message" instead of the actual error
• Fixed background sessions ignoring effortLevel changes in settings.json when forked through the daemon
• Fixed attached background sessions ignoring CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_MOUSE and CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_MOUSE_CLICKS opt-outs
• Fixed /exit incorrectly warning about running background agents after all named agents had completed
• Fixed background sessions started from a non-git directory unable to edit files when a WorktreeCreate hook was configured
• Fixed the @ directory picker in claude agents not showing registered git worktrees
• Fixed background task output on Windows being permanently replaced by an empty file after /clear
• Fixed content jumping when scrolling up through long transcript history
• Fixed the terminal flickering and jumping while typing in bash mode when a shell-history suggestion was shown
• Fixed literal ^[[I] / ^[[O] escape codes being printed when reattaching to a background session
• Fixed LSP-only plugins being incorrectly flagged for disuse when their language servers deliver diagnostics or answer navigation requests
• Improved responsiveness while long responses stream: live-preview updates no longer re-render the whole screen
• Improved subagent behavior: agents are now less likely to re-delegate their entire task to another subagent
• Reduced binary size by ~7 MB and startup memory by ~7 MB by loading a large bundled dependency lazily instead of inlining it
• Changed left arrow to no longer close the background tasks, diff, and workflow detail views, press Esc instead
• Changed the empty claude agents view to always show the organized sections (Needs input / Working / Completed) with descriptions
• Removed the startup "claude command missing or broken" warnings, they now appear in /doctor and /status instead
• Removed a redundant navigation hint from the claude agents footer
• [VSCode] Added a Settings toggle for "Enable Remote Control for all sessions"

2.1.202 (July 8, 2026)

• Added a "Dynamic workflow size" setting in /config for controlling how large Claude generally makes dynamic workflows (small/medium/large agent counts), an advisory guideline, not an enforced cap
• Added workflow.run_id and workflow.name OpenTelemetry attributes to telemetry emitted by workflow-spawned agents, so a workflow run's activity can be reconstructed from OTel data
• Fixed a crash in the inline Ctrl+R history search when accepting or cancelling while the search was still scanning the history file
• Fixed /rename on background sessions being reverted when the job restarts, which broke addressing the session by its new name
• Fixed transient mTLS handshake failures when settings were re-applied during an in-place client certificate rotation
• Fixed commands sent from Remote Control (mobile/web) into an interactive session failing with "Unknown command"
• Fixed images and files sent from the Remote Control mobile or web app without a caption being silently dropped
• Fixed the sign-in URL printed by claude auth login and claude mcp login --no-browser not being reliably clickable when it wraps over SSH, it is now emitted as a single hyperlink
• Fixed opening a chat from claude agents sometimes failing with "currently running as a background agent" followed by a worker crash/respawn loop
• Fixed workflow scripts with unicode quote escapes in strings being corrupted before parsing; workflow parse errors now show the offending line instead of always blaming TypeScript
• Fixed voice dictation retrying in an unbounded loop when the microphone or audio recorder fails, repeated capture failures now pause voice input
• Fixed /remote-control sessions showing the wrong permission mode in the mobile and web apps
• Fixed resuming a session by name, or opening the resume picker, taking minutes and using a large amount of memory in repositories with many git worktrees
• Fixed installer and updater downloads failing immediately with "aborted" when a proxy or network drops the connection mid-download, transient connection drops now retry
• Fixed re-invoking an already-loaded skill appending a duplicate copy of its instructions to context
• Improved /workflows agent list layout: wider titles, a dedicated time column, shorter model names, and no per-row tool-call counts
• Improved MCP error messages: clearer error when a server config has url but no type, suggesting "type": "http" instead of the misleading "command: expected string"
• Changed /review <pr> back to a fast single-pass review; use /code-review <level> <pr#> for the multi-agent review at a chosen effort level

2.1.201 (July 8, 2026)

• Claude Sonnet 5 sessions no longer use the mid-conversation system role for harness reminders

2.1.200 (July 8, 2026)

• Changed AskUserQuestion dialogs to no longer auto-continue by default; opt into an idle timeout via /config
• Changed the "default" permission mode to "Manual" across the CLI, --help, VS Code, and JetBrains; --permission-mode manual and "defaultMode": "manual" are accepted alongside default
• Fixed a crash at startup when disabledMcpServers or enabledMcpServers in .claude.json is set to a non-array value
• Fixed background sessions silently stopping mid-turn after sleep/wake or when reopening a stalled session
• Fixed background sessions re-running a turn cancelled with Esc after a stall respawn
• Fixed background agents never starting again after a crash left a stale daemon.lock whose PID the OS reused
• Fixed background-agent daemon handover so a reinstalled older build can no longer take over the daemon; build recency is now judged by the version's embedded build timestamp
• Fixed background-agent roster issues: transient corruption permanently disabling orphan cleanup, older binaries not preserving fields written by newer versions, and socket auth tokens being stripped during daemon restarts
• Fixed subagents cut off by a rate limit before producing any text output returning an empty result instead of failing cleanly
• Fixed control bytes from background-agent output reaching the terminal in the agent view
• Fixed claude agents --plugin-dir <dir> not showing the plugin's agents and skills in the agent view when the flag is placed after agents
• Fixed project-scoped plugins not loading correctly from git worktrees of the same repository
• Fixed /mcp server list not tracking focus for screen readers and magnifiers
• Fixed voice dictation showing a misleading "Voice connection failed" message when a recording captures no audio
• Fixed rendering flicker under tmux 3.4+ by enabling synchronized terminal output
• Improved screen-reader output: decorative glyphs are now hidden, transcript symbols read as short labels, and nested tables read as Header: value. lines
• Improved the install script to explain when installation is killed by the system running out of memory

2.1.199 (July 8, 2026)

• Stacked slash-skill invocations like /skill-a /skill-b do XYZ now load all leading skills (up to 5), not just the first
• Fixed SSL certificate errors (TLS-inspecting proxies, missing NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS, expired certs) burning retries before showing actionable guidance, they now fail immediately with the fix hint
• Fixed streaming responses being discarded when the API emits a mid-stream overloaded/server error after partial output, the partial is now kept with an incomplete-response notice
• Fixed subagents cut off by a rate limit or server error silently failing instead of returning their partial work to the parent
• Fixed subagents reporting API errors (e.g. usage limit reached) as successful results, the error is now reported to the parent agent
• Fixed the background-agent daemon on Linux killing itself and every running agent every ~50 seconds after an unclean shutdown left a corrupted worker record
• Fixed background agents failing to cold-start over SSH on macOS with "Could not switch to audit session" (regression in 2.1.196)
• Fixed claude stop being silently undone when it raced a background-agent respawn, the respawn now honors the stop
• Fixed background job progress indicators stalling for minutes while the job ran long commands
• Fixed background sessions on memory-starved machines showing a generic error, they now indicate low memory and suggest freeing resources
• Fixed remote sessions briefly flapping between Working and Idle in the agent view when a background agent completes
• Fixed idle subagents vanishing from the agent panel while other subagents were still working; surplus idle agents now collapse into an expandable summary row
• Fixed typing /model or /fast while viewing a subagent silently opening the lead's model picker, a notice now explains the command applies to the lead
• Fixed SessionStart, Setup, and SubagentStart hooks silently hiding stderr when exiting with code 2, the error is now shown in the transcript
• Fixed claude --dangerously-skip-permissions daemon <subcommand> being treated as a chat prompt instead of running the subcommand
• Fixed SendMessage silently misrouting when a re-spawned agent reuses a previous agent's name, the tool now detects the mismatch and asks the caller to retarget
• Fixed opening or resuming a session with no new messages needlessly growing the transcript file
• Fixed backgrounding a session with left arrow or /background dropping its /color from the agent view row
• Fixed resetting a corrupted config file from the startup recovery dialog destroying it unrecoverably, it now backs up the file first
• Fixed Claude in Chrome repeatedly opening the reconnect page when sessions run from different builds or config directories
• Fixed plan mode not prompting for state-changing browser tool calls; read-only browser_batch calls are now correctly auto-allowed
• Transient server rate-limit errors (429s unrelated to your usage limit) are now retried automatically with backoff for subscribers instead of failing the turn
• CLAUDE_CODE_RETRY_WATCHDOG now raises the default retry count for non-capacity transient errors to 300 and lifts the cap of 15 on CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_RETRIES
• claude agents session rows now show pull-request links as bare #N without the redundant "PR" label

Notes