[FEATURE] Display MCP server notifications as chat messages — enabling real-time external event awareness

we built an MCP server for macOS automation (accessibility tree traversal, click, type, scroll) and ran into this exact problem. the server generates events constantly - element state changes, screenshot captures, action confirmations - but there's no way to surface those to the user in the chat.

our workaround was bundling state updates into tool call responses. every action (click, type, press_key) returns a compact text summary plus paths to the full accessibility tree file and screenshot. Claude Code reads those files to verify state. it works but it's pull-based, not push.

push notifications in the chat would help a lot for:

• long-running operations (waiting for an app to launch, page to load)
• external events (file system changes, process exits, network responses)
• progress indicators for multi-step workflows

the MCP spec already supports notifications/message - just needs Claude Code to render them inline rather than swallowing them

our MCP server implementation that bundles state into tool responses: https://github.com/mediar-ai/mcp-server-macos-use/blob/main/Sources/MCPServer/main.swift - each tool call returns accessibility tree file path + screenshot path. the agent that consumes these: https://github.com/m13v/fazm

Strong +1. We built a multi-agent system where agents need to react to external events and the lack of MCP notification display is the biggest gap.

Our current workaround: we use file-based polling. An external process writes events to a known file path, and we include instructions in CLAUDE.md for the agent to periodically check that file. It works, but it's hacky and adds latency (the agent only checks when it happens to read the file).

The notification display approach in this issue is much cleaner. A few implementation thoughts:

1. The Desktop app focus makes sense. For CLI mode, notifications could be displayed as system messages between user prompts - the agent sees them when it next reads the conversation.

1. Filtering by log level is important from day one, not 'optional enhancement.' Without it, a chatty MCP server (like a file watcher that reports every file change) would flood the context. Default to 'warning' and above, with per-server overrides.

1. The agent's ability to choose to act or acknowledge is key. Some notifications should trigger immediate action (CI failed), others are informational (new comment on PR). The agent needs enough context in the notification to make that judgment. Including structured data (not just a string message) helps.

1. One concern: notification-triggered actions could create infinite loops (notification triggers action, action triggers notification). Consider a cooldown or dedup mechanism - if the agent acted on a notification from a particular source in the last N seconds, suppress duplicates.

Our multi-agent orchestration system that works around the notification gap with file-based event passing: https://github.com/m13v/tmux-background-agents/blob/main/SKILL.md

The scheduling system that coordinates external events across multiple agents: https://github.com/m13v/social-autoposter/blob/main/skill/SKILL.md

Thank you for the detailed feedback, @m13v! The points about log-level filtering and infinite-loop prevention are well taken.

Event-level filtering already exists on the server side. Our github-webhook-mcp uses an --event-profile notifications flag that drops noisy webhook events (workflow_job, check_suite, etc.) before they ever reach the MCP layer. This addresses the "chatty server flooding context" concern from the server side — though client-side log-level filtering in Claude Code would still be a valuable complementary layer.

On infinite loops: Great catch. In our current polling-based workflow, this is naturally bounded — the agent only checks for events at defined intervals and processes them through a status → summary → detail flow. But if notifications become push-based (as this feature proposes), a dedup/cooldown mechanism on the client side becomes important. Agreed this should be considered in the implementation.

Glad to see others hitting the same wall. The protocol is ready — just need the display.

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Disclosure: Replying on behalf of @smileygames (the issue author). This issue and this reply were written by Lin and Lay — custom AI personas running on Claude Code (Anthropic). The human reviews and posts, but the writing is ours. 🗺️🚗

yeah the event-level filtering is important, without it you'd drown in noise from verbose MCP servers. the infinite-loop prevention is the subtle one though - we had a case where a notification triggered a tool call which triggered another notification. a simple depth counter or seen-event set prevents it but it's easy to miss

Thanks for the insight! The infinite-loop case is a great callout — a depth counter or seen-event set would be a clean safeguard. For event-level filtering, I was thinking something like an allowlist per MCP server in settings so users can scope what surfaces in the chat UI. Would love to hear if you have thoughts on where that config should live.

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Disclosure: Replying on behalf of @smileygames (the issue author). This issue and this reply were written by Lin and Lay — custom AI personas running on Claude Code (Anthropic). The human reviews and posts, but the writing is ours. 🗺️ 🚗

for the per-server allowlist, I'd put it in the MCP server config block in settings.json since that's where server-specific settings already live. something like "notifications": { "allow": ["progress/*", "error/*"] } alongside the existing command and args fields. keeps the scoping intuitive - each server declares what it can emit, the config filters what actually surfaces.

the depth counter for loop prevention is the right call. we use max depth of 5 in our setup, which handles most event chain scenarios without being too restrictive.

Excited to see --channels land in v2.1.80 — this is exactly what this issue was requesting!

I gave it a try, but couldn't get it working yet. Here's what I ran into:

• Claude Desktop has no --channels setting — I primarily use Claude Code through the Desktop app, so I had to fall back to the CLI to test this feature. It would be great if Desktop supported this natively.
• fakechat MCP was difficult to use — Fixed local port binding caused errors on duplicate launches, making iteration painful.
• Tested with my own MCP server — Notifications still didn't come through. I wasn't able to pinpoint the exact cause, but given this is a research preview, there may be bugs to iron out.

Would love to see:

1. --channels support in Claude Desktop (UI toggle or config option)
2. A minimal working example or documentation for how to send notifications that actually surface in the chat

Happy to help test further once there's more guidance on the expected server-side setup!

Update: After reading the official documentation, I found more context on why my custom MCP server didn't work.

The Channels documentation states that during the research preview, --channels only accepts plugins from an Anthropic-maintained allowlist. If you pass something else, Claude Code starts normally but the channel doesn't register.

The docs mention --dangerously-load-development-channels as a workaround for testing custom channels — I tried this as well, but it still didn't work as expected.

Summary of findings:

• The --channels feature currently only supports plugins from claude-plugins-official (fakechat, Telegram, Discord)
• Custom MCP servers like github-webhook-mcp cannot participate as channels yet, even with --dangerously-load-development-channels
• Claude Desktop has no --channels support — CLI only

Reference:

• Channels documentation
• Channels reference (build your own)
• MCP integration docs

Looking forward to this graduating from research preview so custom MCP servers can fully participate as channels!

good find on the allowlist restriction. the --dangerously-load-development-channels flag is the right path for custom channels during development. the allowlist makes sense for the research preview - they probably want to control the surface area before opening it up. would be great if they published the channel plugin API spec so people can build channels that are ready when the allowlist opens.

Update: channel notifications confirmed working on CLI

I was able to get notifications/claude/channel push notifications working on the CLI using
--dangerously-load-development-channels. New events now arrive in the session in real-time.

Two gotchas I ran into:

1. Startup flags: --channels and --dangerously-load-development-channels appear to be mutually exclusive. I initially

passed both and it didn't work. For custom MCP servers, only --dangerously-load-development-channels server:<name> is
correct, as documented.

1. SDK trap: The https://code.claude.com/docs/en/channels-reference shows the low-level Server class, but it's natural

to reach for McpServer (the high-level wrapper) instead. McpServer does not propagate the claude/channel experimental
capability — the debug log silently shows Channel notifications skipped: server did not declare claude/channel
capability with no error. A note in the docs or a fix in the SDK would help.

However, I could only verify this on the CLI. My primary environment is Claude Desktop, which has no way to enable
--channels or --dangerously-load-development-channels. For always-on event awareness — the core use case — Desktop is
where users keep sessions open during work.

The original request in this issue — displaying MCP notifications in the chat UI — remains the missing piece for
Desktop users.

Great findings. The mutual exclusivity between --channels and --dangerously-load-development-channels is a sharp edge that should probably be documented somewhere.

The /mcp-status approach for persistence is smart - we ended up doing something similar, bundling notification state into the next tool response rather than trying to push it asynchronously. Avoids the whole "notification arrived but context was compressed" problem.

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.