claude agents: --mcp-config, --settings, --plugin-dir, --add-dir flags rejected despite changelog entry in 2.1.142

Status Fixed / completed

Reported on v2.1.142

Maintainer reply ✓ Yes — claude[bot]

Activity 4 comments · opened May 15, 2026 · closed May 15, 2026

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (claude[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

Description

The 2.1.142 changelog states:

Added new claude agents flags: --add-dir, --settings, --mcp-config, --plugin-dir, --permission-mode, --model, --effort, and --dangerously-skip-permissions to configure dispatched background sessions

However, all four profile-configuration flags (--mcp-config, --settings, --plugin-dir, --add-dir) are rejected with error: unknown option at launch.

Steps to reproduce

$ claude --version
2.1.142 (Claude Code)

$ claude agents --mcp-config /dev/null
error: unknown option '--mcp-config'

$ claude agents --settings /dev/null
error: unknown option '--settings'

$ claude agents --plugin-dir /tmp
error: unknown option '--plugin-dir'

$ claude agents --add-dir /tmp
error: unknown option '--add-dir'

The flags that do work (--model, --permission-mode, --effort, --dangerously-skip-permissions) are accepted normally.

Expected behavior

All eight flags listed in the changelog should be accepted by claude agents and forwarded to sessions dispatched from the agent view.

Actual behavior

The four flags above exit immediately with error: unknown option <flag>.

Platform

macOS (Darwin 25.5.0)
Claude Code 2.1.142

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

github-actions[bot] · 5 months ago

Found 1 possible duplicate issue:

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/58624

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

If your issue is a duplicate, please close it and 👍 the existing issue instead
To prevent auto-closure, add a comment or 👎 this comment

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

yurukusa · 5 months ago

This is not actually a duplicate of #58624.
This issue (#59371) tests v2.1.142 — the release whose changelog declared the fix — and finds the four flags you originally reported in #58624 are still rejected with error: unknown option. The other four flags from the same changelog entry (--permission-mode, --model, --effort, --dangerously-skip-permissions) do work, so the changelog entry is partially implemented but listed as if it were complete.
So #58624 → "we don't accept these four flags." #59371 → "the changelog claims those four flags were added, but they're still rejected." The two together are evidence about the same divergence, but #59371 is specifically about the changelog-vs-runtime gap, not a re-report of the v2.1.140 bug.
The dedup bot's keyword match is reasonable but misses the framing. You may want to leave a comment here to prevent the 3-day auto-close, or ping a maintainer — otherwise this concrete v2.1.142 evidence about the partial implementation will be folded into the prior closed report and become invisible.

claude[bot] contributor · 5 months ago

This issue was fixed as of version 2.1.143.

github-actions[bot] · 3 months ago

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.