Regression: mid-task new instructions silently replace the original task instead of being treated as additive

Summary

When a user inserts a new instruction in the middle of an ongoing task, the current Claude Code (Opus 4.7) tends to silently abandon the original task and pivot to the new one, rather than:

• treating it as an additive constraint / clarification, or
• asking whether to pause / replace the current task.

Subjectively this feels like a regression from earlier Claude versions (4.5 / 4.6), where mid-task interjections were more often merged into the running task.

Impact

• Original work gets dropped without acknowledgement.
• User has to re-state the original requirement to recover it.
• Erodes trust in long, multi-step tasks because users start hedging every new message with "continue the previous task AND ...".

Suggested behavior

On a new user message during an active task, Claude should classify the message as one of: append / amend / replace / parallel, and when ambiguous, briefly confirm before discarding the in-flight task.

Environment

• Claude Code CLI
• Model: Opus 4.7 (1M context)
• Observed: 2026-04