Tasks

Create, manage, and track background tasks in Claude Code.

Claude Code includes a task system for managing longer-running work that may span multiple steps or need to run in the background.

Task tools

Tool	Description
TaskCreateTool	Create a new named task
TaskUpdateTool	Update task status or output
TaskGetTool	Retrieve a specific task’s details
TaskListTool	List all tasks and their statuses
TaskOutputTool	Get the output from a completed task
TaskStopTool	Stop a running task

Creating tasks

Claude uses the task system automatically for long-running work. You can also ask explicitly:

> Create a background task to analyze all the TypeScript errors across the codebase
> Start a task that monitors the test suite and reports failures

Viewing tasks

> /tasks

The /tasks command opens the task management UI showing all active, pending, and completed tasks with their current status and output.

Scheduled tasks

The ScheduleCronTool (also shown as CronCreateTool in some contexts) lets Claude create scheduled triggers:

> Set up a daily task that runs the test suite at 9am and reports results

Scheduled tasks use cron-style scheduling and run via the background task runner.

Background task monitoring

Use /tasks to monitor task progress:

• pending — Task is queued but not yet started
• running — Task is actively executing
• completed — Task finished successfully
• failed — Task encountered an error

> /tasks
> Show me the output from the last completed task
> Stop the running analysis task

Tasks persist across REPL sessions. Use /resume to reconnect to a previous session and check on tasks that were running when you closed Claude Code.