Desktop app: account-level claude.ai MCP connectors load into Claude Code tab despite being disabled

What happened?

In the desktop app, claude.ai account-level connectors (Gmail, Notion, ClickUp, Shopify, Alpha Vantage, etc.) are injected into the Claude Code tab's MCP tool set, even when they've been disabled for the project.

Disabling them per-project via /mcp correctly writes them to disabledMcpServers in ~/.claude.json, but a newly opened Claude Code session still loads all of them. It appears the running desktop-app process caches the connector list at launch, so opening a new chat/session within the same process reuses the cached set — a full Cmd+Q relaunch seems to be required for the disable to take effect.

This means a coding session can start with dozens of unrelated tools (marketing, email, e-commerce, finance connectors) loaded into context.

What I expected

• A per-project (or per-surface) disable in the Claude Code tab should apply to new sessions without a full app relaunch.
• Ideally, a way to keep account connectors available in regular Claude chat while excluding them from the Claude Code tab, without disconnecting them account-wide.

Steps to reproduce

1. Connect several claude.ai connectors via account settings (so they appear in normal Claude chat).
2. Open the Claude Code tab in the desktop app on a project.
3. In /mcp, disable the account connectors for the project (this writes disabledMcpServers in ~/.claude.json).
4. Start a new Claude Code session in the same app process.
5. Observe the disabled connectors are still loaded as MCP tools.

Workarounds found

• Full Cmd+Q relaunch of the desktop app (not just closing the window) — forces a re-read of the disabled list.
• Disconnecting at the account level (claude.ai → Settings → Connectors) — the only true global off-switch, but it also removes the connectors from regular Claude chat.
• A project .mcp.json does not help, since these connectors aren't locally-defined servers — they're account-level, so there's nothing local to override.

Questions / requests

• Is there an intended per-surface toggle to separate "connectors for chat" from "connectors for Claude Code"? If not, this would be a valuable addition.
• Can the Claude Code tab re-read disabledMcpServers on new-session start rather than only at app launch?

Environment

• Desktop app on macOS (Darwin 25.2.0)
• Bundled Claude Code: 2.1.187