Unclear The condition that decides whether the fetch is delayed is not known, so it is unclear whether this applies to you.
What
Claude Code downloads a list of web addresses from the official MCP registry, a directory of MCP servers (add-ons that give Claude extra tools). It used to fetch this list at startup. It now waits until it first needs to look up one of those addresses.
Setting the environment variable CLAUDE_CODE_MCP_REGISTRY_FETCH_AT_STARTUP brings back fetching at startup. The delay applies only under a particular mode.
Why
Claude Code makes one less network request while starting up.
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubt
The condition that decides whether the fetch is delayed is not known, so it is unclear whether this applies to you.