What
Claude Code can start helper agents, called subagents, that work on part of a task in the background. While they run, Claude Code normally writes short progress summaries so you can see what each one is doing.
You can now switch these summaries off by setting the environment variable CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_AGENT_PROGRESS_SUMMARIES. An environment variable is a named value you set in your shell before starting Claude Code. When it is set:
- No progress summaries are written for background agents.
- Any summary an agent already had is cleared from its progress display.
- Claude Code writes a line to its log saying summaries are off because the variable is set.
Why
Each progress summary is an extra request in the background. This gives you and anyone running Claude Code for a team a way to stop those requests entirely.