Autonomous 'goal' turns get structured pause/retry/stop handling with clear 'Goal paused' messages
When you set a goal with /goal, Claude keeps working across turns until the goal is met or clears for another reason. The logic that decides what happens when a goal-driven turn is interrupted has been rewritten from a simple reason string into a structured classification covering retrying, pausing, or stopping, for cases like API errors, rate limiting, usage limits, a hook (an automated check) ending the turn, or a goal-check outcome. Each case now shows a specific message, such as "Goal paused · the API rejected the last request · send a message to continue, or run /goal clear".
This makes it clearer why an autonomous goal run stopped or paused, and tells you exactly what to do next instead of leaving you to guess.
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
| `/goal` | The previous turn finishes, or, in an interactive session, an [idle check-in](#background-work-defers-evaluation) or an [automatic retry](#other-errors-retry-or-pause-the-goal) comes due | A model confirms the condition is met …goal see the edit
Anthropic's documentation has since written up /goal, on Keep Claude working toward a goal.
Fixed /goal runs silently stalling after API errors, network drops, or token limits: the goal now retries with backoff, or pauses and says…