What’s New in Claude Code 2.1.319: MCP Tasks in the Background and Stricter Auto Mode

Claude Code 2.1.319 landed Nov. 6. Here’s what stood out from the release notes.

New

• Auto mode changes: with telemetry or feature flags off (including behind LLM gateways), calls the server can’t check are now asked about or denied, with no fallback to the built-in classifier. CLAUDE_CODE_AUTO_MODE_SERVER=0 keeps the old behavior.
• MCP tasks: when an MCP server runs a tool call as a task, Claude Code moves it to the background and reports back when it finishes. CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_MCP_TASK_BACKGROUND turns that off.
• permissions.denyInsteadOfPrompting denies a tool call that would wait on a prompt and keeps the turn going.
• /claude-api latency-optimize finds where your API code makes people wait.
• CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_FEATURE_FLAGS stops flag fetching without turning off telemetry.
• /tasks gets an “Earlier in this session” row for finished subagents, plus a batch of gateway admin settings.

Fixes worth knowing

• MCP servers on the older handshake connect again.
• /diff works with a file or folder named HEAD and in long sessions.
• A 401 retry loop that caused 401s in other sessions is fixed.

My take

Deny-instead-of-prompt is great for unattended runs. Check the auto mode change if you sit behind a gateway.

Review before you install: read the release notes yourself, back up your config, and try new versions somewhere you can afford to break first.

God Bless, and May the Source Be with You!

References & Further Reading

• Claude Code v2.1.319 release notes (GitHub)
• Claude Code Leaked Account Emails Into User-Agent Headers (EtherNinja)