[DOCS] Ctrl+T "Toggle task list" is easily misread as the /tasks background-task view — and silently no-ops when the checklist is empty

Environment

• Claude Code v2.1.198 (native install), macOS (Darwin 24.6.0)
• No custom ~/.claude/keybindings.json

Summary

Three different features are called "task(s)" across the shortcut table and commands reference, and Ctrl+T gives no feedback when there is nothing to show. Together these make Ctrl+T look broken and make the shortcut row easy to misread:

1. Ctrl+T — "Toggle task list · Show or hide the task list in the terminal status area" (interactive-mode, General controls). This toggles Claude's to-do checklist — the bindable action is app:toggleTodos, documented in keybindings as "Toggle task list visibility".
2. /tasks (alias /bashes) — "view and manage everything running in the background" (commands).
3. Ctrl+B — "Background running tasks" (same shortcut table).

What happened

• The spinner showed ✻ … · 1 shell still running and I wanted to see that shell.
• The shortcut row Ctrl+T | Toggle task list | Show or hide the task list in the terminal status area reads, in that moment, like "the list of running tasks".
• Pressing Ctrl+T did nothing: the session had no checklist items, and the toggle renders nothing and gives no feedback when the checklist is empty — there is no way to tell the keypress even registered. This empty-list behavior is not documented.
• Asking Claude inside Claude Code "how do I reveal the running shell?" reproduced the misreading: it quoted the docs row and pointed me at Ctrl+T for watching background work. Only after pushback did it land on the correct answer (/tasks). This is the product-self-knowledge failure mode previously reported in #33059 (closed as not-planned/stale) and #18901 (closed as duplicate) — ambiguous docs get relayed as confidently wrong in-product answers.

Repro

1. Start a session and don't let Claude create checklist items (no TaskCreate use).
2. Run a long command in the background so the status area shows "1 shell still running".
3. Press Ctrl+T → nothing happens, no feedback.
4. Have Claude create checklist items, press Ctrl+T again → the checklist toggles, confirming the binding worked all along.

Suggested fixes

Any of these would have prevented the confusion:

• Docs: in the Ctrl+T row and the "Task list" section, disambiguate explicitly from background tasks, e.g. "Toggle Claude's task checklist (app:toggleTodos) — not the background-task view; use /tasks for running shells/agents." Cross-references in both directions (Task list ↔ Background Bash commands / /tasks) would help both human readers and Claude answering questions about itself.
• Docs: document that the toggle shows nothing when the checklist is empty.
• Product: pressing Ctrl+T with an empty checklist could briefly show "No tasks in this session" instead of doing nothing.
• Product (optional): a bindable action to open the /tasks view (today it has no app:* action in the keybindings reference).

Related

• #72823 requests rebinding Ctrl+T to character transposition — more evidence users don't discover what Ctrl+T currently does.
• #33059, #54646, #18901 — prior reports of Claude Code answering questions about its own features incorrectly; this issue is a concrete, fixable instance of the docs side of that problem.