GoKawiil"Mechanical egg timer" by Hustvedt is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 . Padded to a wider frame; this adaptation is likewise licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.
On Canada Day (July 1), 2026, Anthropic shipped a surprising “easter egg” to users of Claude Code: 2.1.198 includes an efficiency bypass which allows agents to continue on without being blocked on direction from a human. You essentially get a 60 second timer after Claude Code asks for input. If you miss the window, Claude Code helpfully does what it thinks is best and continues on its way. It looks like this:
● Claude asked: ⎿ … ● No response after 60s — continued without an answer ● The user stepped away. I'll proceed with best judgment. My plan:
Note: the above is taken verbatim from one of my own claude sessions, with the questions having been trimmed.
If you find this behaviour surprising, you’re not alone. Let’s consider the possible consequences:
Do you have to take your laptop to the kitchen with you when you’re making a sandwich? What happens if you are afk during this window?
How many agents are you running at once? Can you possibly observe them all at the same time? What if two or more agents ask for your input during the same 60 second window?
What if the agent makes the wrong choice? How many tokens have been burned in the meantime?
What if you are using agents for deployments? (Yes, I know, but what if)
These are reasonable things you might consider when shipping this feature and maybe you’d document your reasoning in the changelog. But what if you never mentioned the new defaults in the changelog at all? Wouldn’t that be even more surprising? (Spoiler: it was!)
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