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

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Task tools

ToolDescription
TaskCreateToolCreate a new named task
TaskUpdateToolUpdate task status or output
TaskGetToolRetrieve a specific task’s details
TaskListToolList all tasks and their statuses
TaskOutputToolGet the output from a completed task
TaskStopToolStop a running task

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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

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Viewing tasks

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

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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.

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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.

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