MCP tool approval requests from Agent Teams teammates do not route to team lead

Description

When an Agent Teams teammate attempts to use an MCP tool (e.g., mcp__memory__search_nodes, mcp__memory__create_entities), the approval request does not appear in the team lead's terminal pane. The teammate's pane shows "Waiting for team lead approval" but the lead never receives the prompt. The only way to unblock is pressing Escape in the teammate's pane, which rejects the tool call.

Built-in tools (Bash, Read, Write, Edit, WebFetch) route approval requests to the team lead correctly.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start an Agent Teams session with TeamCreate
2. Spawn a teammate (e.g., solution-architect via Agent tool with team_name)
3. Have the teammate call any MCP tool (e.g., mcp__memory__search_nodes)
4. Observe: teammate pane shows "Waiting for team lead approval"
5. Observe: lead's terminal pane receives no approval prompt
6. Only option: press Escape in teammate pane to reject

Expected Behavior

MCP tool approval requests should route to the team lead's terminal pane for approval, the same way built-in tool approvals do.

Actual Behavior

MCP tool approval requests are stuck in the teammate's pane. The lead is never notified. The tool call can only be rejected (Escape), not approved.

Additional Findings

• PreToolUse hooks fire for MCP tools in teammates, but {decision: allow} and {decision: deny} outputs are both ignored for MCP tools (they work for built-in tools)
• PermissionRequest hooks fire for the lead but never fire for teammates on MCP tool calls
• Adding MCP tools to settings.local.json permissions.allow list auto-approves them (workaround)
• The tools: field in skill frontmatter auto-approves built-in tools for teammates but not MCP tools
• MCP wildcard permissions (mcp__memory__*) do not work (related: #2928, #13077, #3107)

Workaround

Pre-approve specific MCP tools in settings.local.json before spawning teammates:

{
  permissions: {
    allow: [
      mcp__memory__search_nodes,
      mcp__memory__open_nodes,
      mcp__memory__read_graph
    ]
  }
}

This bypasses the approval routing entirely (auto-approves for both lead and teammates). Not ideal as it removes human-in-the-loop review.

Environment

• Claude Code v2.1.76
• Opus 4.6 (1M context)
• Linux 6.8.0-101-generic
• Terminal/tmux mode (not VS Code)
• MCP servers: mcp-server-memory, notebooklm-mcp

Related Issues

• #30280 (Sub-agents don't inherit MCP tools)
• #13605 (Custom subagents can't access project-scoped MCP servers)
• #25254 (Team agent messages not delivered to lead)
• #29499 (Tools rejected without user seeing prompt)