Claude Code ships MCP Tasks and Elicitations for durable long-running tool calls
Anthropic
Claude Code added server-side MCP Tasks and Elicitations in public beta from v2.1.304, announced October 23: an MCP server can answer a tools/call with a task handle containing a task ID, status, TTL and polling interval instead of blocking, and Claude Code polls tasks/get, shows the job in /tasks, and survives exiting and resuming the session. Elicitations let a server pause mid-task and request structured input, rendered as a terminal form or a URL flow tied to the input_required state. It needs MCP protocol revision 2026-07-28 and works only in the terminal CLI, Agent SDK and GitHub Actions, not the VS Code extension, desktop app, Amazon Bedrock, subagent calls or one-shot claude -p runs.
Why it matters
Moves agent tool calls from request/response into durable jobs that outlive the session.
Importance: 3/5
New protocol-level capability that changes how agent tool calls are scheduled.