Background tasks from terminated remote sessions persist as "Running" and cannot be cleared

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?

When using Claude Code on the web (remote execution environment), background tasks spawned in previous sessions survive session teardown and reappear as "Running" in the Background Tasks panel in subsequent sessions. The elapsed timer keeps incrementing indefinitely (showing 1,500h+ in my case), making them appear actively running when no real process exists in the new container.

Additionally, the Claude Desktop app continuously notifies the user that these phantom tasks are running, creating alert fatigue and making it impossible to distinguish real background activity from stale ghost entries.

Impact

Users lose trust in the background task notifications entirely, meaning real notifications get ignored alongside fake ones. The feature that is meant to surface active work becomes noise.

What Should Happen?

Expected behaviour

Tasks from a terminated session are automatically marked as Stopped or Finished when that session ends
Stale tasks from dead sessions are clearable (or auto-cleared) in the new session
The notification system does not surface phantom tasks to the user

Actual behaviour

All background tasks from previous sessions reappear as "Running" with ever-incrementing timers
Clicking the stop (□) button does not persist — tasks reappear after the panel is closed or refreshed
The "Clear" button only removes Finished tasks, giving no way to permanently remove stale Running entries
Claude Desktop continuously notifies the user that these tasks are running
A user has no way to distinguish a genuinely active task from a stale ghost — both look identical

Error Messages/Logs

Actual behaviour

All background tasks from previous sessions reappear as "Running" with ever-incrementing timers
Clicking the stop (□) button does not persist — tasks reappear after the panel is closed or refreshed
The "Clear" button only removes Finished tasks, giving no way to permanently remove stale Running entries
Claude Desktop continuously notifies the user that these tasks are running
A user has no way to distinguish a genuinely active task from a stale ghost — both look identical

Impact

Users lose trust in the background task notifications entirely, meaning real notifications get ignored alongside fake ones. The feature that is meant to surface active work becomes noise.

Steps to Reproduce

Steps to reproduce

Start a remote Claude Code session on the web
Spawn one or more background tasks (Bash or Agent with run_in_background)
End the session / allow it to time out
Start a new remote session for the same project
Open the Background Tasks panel

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

Claude Desktop Code: web (remote execution environment)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

_No response_