You'll noticeTier: how much it should matter to you
4Useful: my rating, 1 to 5
3Signal: worth watching, 1 to 5
SubagentsArea: what it touches
New FeaturesKind: in v2.1.317,
What probably matters to youSection of the release
Unclear It is not clear whether this behaviour is switched on for anyone in this release.
What
When a message is sent to an agent that is in the middle of running tools, Claude Code can now move those running tool calls into the background so the message gets through. A tool call is a single action Claude takes, such as running a shell command. The tools keep running. The result reads "Moved N running tool call(s) to the background without stopping them".
A shell command moved this way keeps the time limit it had while running in the foreground, plus a small extra margin.
Why
A message sent to a busy agent may no longer have to wait for a long command to finish.
How sure we are
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubtIt is not clear whether this behaviour is switched on for anyone in this release.