release aidev SIG 3/5

Claude Code 2.1.203: background agent reliability, worktree isolation and memory fixes

A large fix release centred on background agents: sessions that went permanently unresponsive, subagents silently stopped and restarted from scratch, and worktree-isolated agents running commands in the parent checkout. Also fixes a per-turn CPU and memory regression in interactive sessions and cuts ~7 MB from both binary size and startup memory.

PUBLISHED2026-07-07
OBSERVED2026-08-11
AGE1mo
SOURCES1
  • Fixed a memory and per-turn CPU regression: the context-usage indicator no longer re-analyzes the whole transcript each turn
  • Fixed returning to claude agents silently stopping running subagents and re-running the prompt from scratch
  • Fixed background sessions becoming permanently unresponsive to attach/reply/stop when the daemon's session token went stale
  • Fixed 15–20s stalls opening/switching background sessions on macOS from false low-memory detection (regression in 2.1.196)
  • Fixed worktree-isolated subagents running shell commands in the parent checkout; worktree creation rejecting nested repos in multi-repo workspaces
  • Fixed background/agent-view sessions dropping a shell-exported ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, which sent API keys to the default endpoint and failed with 401
  • Fixed background agents inheriting a stale PATH from the daemon (missing tools on Windows), crash-looping on a deleted/invalid working directory, and a daemon auto-upgrade failure silently killing all running sessions
  • Fixed TaskStop/TaskOutput not finding agents spawned by another agent; errors now list running agents by id and description
  • Fixed Bash "argument list too long" in repos with many git worktrees
  • New: login-expiry warning before background sessions are interrupted; grey ⏸ footer badge in manual permission mode; additional working directories exposed via MCP roots/list with notifications/roots/list_changed
  • Behaviour: left arrow no longer closes background tasks, diff and workflow detail views — use Esc; startup "claude command missing or broken" warnings moved to /doctor and /status
  • Subagents are less likely to re-delegate their entire task to another subagent
  • Binary size and startup memory each reduced ~7 MB via lazy loading of a bundled dependency
  • [VSCode] Settings toggle for "Enable Remote Control for all sessions"
fixfeatureapi-change

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