Summary
Anthropic released Claude Code v2.1.198 on July 1, 2026, moving Claude in Chrome to general availability and adding background-agent notification hooks, automatic draft-PR completion for worktree agents, AWS upstream failover, and several agent-team reliability fixes.
What changed
Claude Code v2.1.198 made Claude in Chrome generally available, added agent_needs_input and agent_completed notification hooks, added a /dataviz skill, improved provider failover and transient network retry behavior, and changed finished background agents to commit, push, and open draft PRs for code work in worktrees.
Why it matters
The release moves Claude Code further from an interactive CLI into a managed agent workspace: background tasks can notify users, finish code work into draft PRs, and recover from more provider and network failures. That makes long-running coding-agent workflows more practical for teams that need explicit handoff points rather than terminal-only sessions.
Evidence excerpt
The release notes list Claude in Chrome as generally available, add background agent notification hooks, add /dataviz, improve failover and retries, and make background agents open draft PRs when code work finishes.