Scheduled trigger MCP connectors fail — tokens not available in remote execution environment

Summary

Scheduled triggers (remote agents) cannot access MCP connector tools despite connectors showing as connected in the claude.ai UI. The same prompt and connectors work perfectly when run locally via Claude Code CLI.

Environment

• Claude Code CLI (local runs work)
• claude.ai scheduled triggers (remote runs fail)
• Connectors: Google Calendar, Gmail, Linear

Trigger Details

• Trigger ID: trig_0189NFQ79PJmpziMAu7qvGsS
• Name: Daily Morning Brief
• Schedule: 30 4 * * * (daily at 6:30 AM Europe/Stockholm)
• Created: 2026-04-02
• Model: claude-sonnet-4-6

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a scheduled trigger with Google Calendar, Gmail, and Linear MCP connectors attached
2. Verify connectors show as connected in https://claude.ai/settings/connectors
3. Verify connectors are attached to the trigger in https://claude.ai/code/scheduled
4. Wait for scheduled run, or trigger a manual run via the API or web UI

Expected Behavior

Remote agent should have access to the attached MCP connector tools (Google Calendar, Gmail, Linear) and execute the prompt successfully.

Actual Behavior

Remote agent reports "No Google Calendar MCP tool available", "No Linear MCP tool available", "No Gmail MCP tool available" — every MCP-dependent section fails. The agent falls back to saving output as a local HTML file instead.

What I've Tried

• Disconnecting and reconnecting all three connectors in claude.ai settings, then re-adding them to the trigger — still fails on the next run
• Manual trigger runs via API (RemoteTrigger action: "run") — same failure
• Running the same prompt locally via Claude Code CLI — works perfectly, Gmail draft is created successfully
• Repeated the disconnect/reconnect cycle multiple times over the past week — tokens appear to expire in less than 24 hours, sometimes failing on the very next run after reconnecting

Key Finding

| Method | Result |
|--------|--------|
| Claude Code CLI (local) | Works — Gmail draft created successfully |
| Remote trigger (scheduled cron) | Fails — MCP tools not available |
| Remote trigger (manual run via API/web) | Fails — same issue |

This confirms the prompt and connector configuration are correct. The issue is specifically in how the remote execution environment resolves and passes MCP connector tokens to the agent session.

Impact

The scheduled trigger feature is effectively unusable for any workflow that depends on MCP connectors, since the tokens are not reliably available in remote sessions.