MCP Tasks and Elicitations in Claude Code: Long-Running Tools That Can Ask You Things

Claude Code now supports MCP Tasks and MCP Elicitations, enabling tools to run long operations asynchronously and request user input during execution. Tasks, introduced in the July 2026 MCP release and available in public beta in Claude Code CLI version 2.1.304, let compatible servers immediately return a task ID while Claude Code polls for completion, continues other work, and can cancel tasks; unsupported clients instead receive conventional polling and cancellation tools. Elicitations present terminal forms for confirmations or other structured responses, allowing tools or workflows to pause until users respond, though task-based questions require an interactive terminal session. The @upstash/mcp-toolkit/tasks package provides task support for MCP servers across frameworks, with in-memory operation for simple deployments and Redis plus QStash or Upstash Workflow options for serverless, multi-instance, retryable execution. QStash runs each task in a separate function invocation and retries failures with backoff, while WorkflowDispatcher can split longer work into steps and wait for user responses without occupying a function.

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