Group of 4 Under the hood
The TaskOutput tool was removed; background task output is now read through the Read tool, and its max-length setting was retired
What
- The TaskOutput tool has been removed. Its config field's description now says background task output should be read via the Read tool instead.
TaskOutputwas dropped from the internal tool set used alongside Read, Glob, Grep, NotebookRead, Skill, AskUserQuestion, TaskCreate, TaskGet, TaskList, TaskUpdate, TaskStop, Agent, and TodoWrite.- The
TASK_MAX_OUTPUT_LENGTHenvironment variable was dropped from the list of recognized/passthrough settings. - The function that computes the maximum characters allowed for task output no longer reads a
taskOutputMaxCharssetting; it now derives the limit from the current output host/target instead.
Why
This consolidates reading background task output onto the Read tool instead of a separate TaskOutput tool, and moves the output-length limit from a fixed global setting to something derived from where the output is being read.
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubt
The finding does not say what the different output hosts are or how their limits differ from the previous taskOutputMaxChars setting.
Anthropic's release notes agree
Removed the deprecated TaskOutput tool; Claude reads a background task's output file with Read instead, and the taskOutputMaxChars setting…