Claude Code 2.1.198: subagents run in the background by default, Claude in Chrome GA
Background execution becomes the default for subagents, and background agents launched from claude agents now finish code work by committing, pushing, and opening a draft PR instead of stopping to ask. Claude in Chrome reaches general availability, and the /agents wizard is removed in favour of editing .claude/agents/ directly.
PUBLISHED2026-07-01
OBSERVED2026-08-11
AGE1mo
SOURCES1
- Subagents run in the background by default; the main session continues and is notified on completion (previously a gradual rollout)
- Claude in Chrome generally available
- Background agents in a worktree now commit, push, and open a draft PR on completion instead of asking
/agentswizard removed — create/manage subagents by asking Claude or editing.claude/agents/- New
Notificationhook events for background agents:agent_needs_input,agent_completed - New
/datavizskill for chart/dashboard design, including a runnable color-palette validator - Gateway: Claude Platform on AWS (
anthropicAws) added as an upstream provider; model-not-found now advances the failover chain - Built-in Explore agent inherits the session model (capped at opus) instead of running on haiku
- Subagents and context compaction inherit the session's extended thinking configuration
- Subagents treat messages from their launching agent as task direction; an agent's message still never counts as user approval
- Fixes: transient network errors (ECONNRESET) now retry with backoff instead of aborting the turn; stuck "Running" background tasks in web/desktop/VS Code panels; agent-team members that die on API errors now report "failed"; AWS/Mantle STS expiry no longer dead-ends at "Please run /login";
claude --bgwith--print/-pnow rejected up front;.claude/rules/conditional rules load through symlinked paths - Syntax highlighting upgraded to highlight.js 11
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