[BUG] Allow users to hide the persistent TaskCreate task list UI

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Example UI

5 tasks (0 done, 5 open)
◻ Triage UI-340
◻ Triage UI-342
◻ Triage UI-343
◻ Triage UI-346
◻ Triage UI-352

Summary

When Claude uses the TaskCreate tool to track multi-step work, the resulting task list renders as persistent UI in the terminal that I can't dismiss while tasks are open. For multi-step work that spans many turns, this eats a chunk of my viewport for the entire duration.

The tradeoff I'm stuck with

• If I ask Claude not to use TaskCreate, it's more likely to forget steps of multi-step plans (there are explicit rules that tell it to use TaskCreate whenever 2+ steps are open, exactly because plans get dropped otherwise — that's why the behavior exists).
• If I let Claude use TaskCreate, I eat permanent screen real estate for the whole session until all tasks close.

There's no middle ground where Claude benefits from tracking tasks without me seeing them.

Repro

1. Ask Claude to do a multi-step task ("triage these 5 Jira tickets").
2. Claude creates 5 tasks via TaskCreate.
3. The task list renders as persistent UI across every subsequent terminal frame until all 5 are marked completed.
4. There's no user-facing setting or keystroke I've found to collapse/hide it.

Proposed fix

A user setting (in ~/.claude/settings.json or a slash command like /tasks hide) that suppresses the rendering of the task list UI without suppressing Claude's use of TaskCreate itself. The tasks still exist in Claude's context — I just don't see them.

NOTE: The above is Claude's version: personally, I'd be perfectly happy if there was no direct way for the user to set this at all, and I just had to ask Claude "please don't show me that annoying task list anymore" to get it to stop (and it remembered it internally).

Reasonable variants:

• Always-hide
• Hide-when-minimized-and-expand-on-demand (e.g. ctrl+t to peek)
• Hide when N > some threshold

Why this matters

Multi-step work is common and the rule is working as designed — Claude genuinely does drop steps without the task list. The visual cost falls entirely on the user, not Claude. Letting users opt out of the rendering preserves Claude's reliability gain while giving users back their viewport.

What Should Happen?

The user should have _some_ way to both:

A) get a Claude that doesn't forget what it's doing, AND
B) not see a significant chunk of UI wasted

As mentioned above:

Proposed fix

A user setting (in ~/.claude/settings.json or a slash command like /tasks hide) that suppresses the rendering of the task list UI without suppressing Claude's use of TaskCreate itself. The tasks still exist in Claude's context — I just don't see them.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

As provided above:

Repro

1. Ask Claude to do a multi-step task ("triage these 5 Jira tickets").
2. Claude creates 5 tasks via TaskCreate.
3. The task list renders as persistent UI across every subsequent terminal frame until all 5 are marked completed.
4. There's no user-facing setting or keystroke I've found to collapse/hide it.

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

? I don't remember this happening before, but I also can't confirm that it just started with version X

Claude Code Version

2.1.119 (Claude Code)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

Obviously I don't know your codebase, but hiding UI is usually very simple, so I would hope 🤞 this ticket could be an "easy win".