[BUG] Remote Routine — MCP connector calls blocked by 'approval required' despite Always Allow (Team plan, macOS)
Resolved 💬 12 comments Opened May 21, 2026 by JeongHeonK Closed May 21, 2026
Environment
- Plan: Team
- Surface: Claude Desktop (macOS) → Routines sidebar → New routine → Remote
- Connector: Gmail (Google Workspace, org-managed)
- Connector UI: read-only Gmail tools (search_threads, get_thread, list_labels) all set to "Always allow"
- Reproduces on both manual "Run now" and scheduled triggers
Repro
- Create a Remote Routine via the Desktop sidebar with the Gmail connector attached
- Routine prompt asks Claude to search Gmail (natural-language phrasing — no explicit MCP tool name in the prompt)
- Trigger the routine
Observed
Gmail: search threads
pageSize: 30
query: newer_than:1d (category:promotions OR category:updates)
Streamable HTTP error: Error POSTing to endpoint: MCP tool call requires approval
The routine environment has no UI channel to surface an approval prompt, so the call fails permanently. Reproduces on every run.
Expected
Per https://code.claude.com/docs/en/routines :
Routines run autonomously as full Claude Code cloud sessions: there is no permission-mode picker and no approval prompts during a run.
Notable
- Custom remote MCP server tools (user-registered via Settings → Connectors → Custom MCP) succeed in the same routine without approval — the bug is scoped to the Anthropic-hosted Gmail / Workspace connector path, not to user-registered remote MCP servers
- Prompt format does not matter — both explicit tool naming (
mcp__Gmail__search_threads) and natural-language phrasing hit the same block, so this is not a prompting issue - The "Always allow" toggle in the connector UI does not change behavior — the cloud routine path appears to ignore it
- Same symptom reported by another user on 2026-05-21 across Gmail, Google Calendar, and Notion connectors: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/56757#issuecomment-4505529362
Impact
Remote Routines with any Anthropic-hosted connector (Gmail, Google Workspace, Notion per the linked comment) are effectively unusable for affected accounts. The product's documented core value (autonomous cloud execution with connectors) does not hold.
Related
- #56757 — closed as
invalidon 2026-05-09 but the same symptom was reported in a 2026-05-21 comment by a separate user - #56954 — different root cause (Desktop Electron IndexedDB on Windows); not applicable to macOS Remote Routine cloud path
Request
- Confirm whether this is a known issue
- ETA for a fix or a supported workaround
- Whether this issue should be triaged here or in another channel (since #56757 was closed as "not about Claude Code")
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