[DOCS] Agent view `The supervisor process` section omits that v2.1.203 makes background agents inherit `PATH` from the dispatching shell rather than the daemon's launch environment

Documentation Type

Incorrect/outdated documentation

Documentation Location

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-view#the-supervisor-process

Section/Topic

The "The supervisor process" subsection of agent-view.md, specifically the two adjacent paragraphs that describe how the supervisor sources provider-selection variables and gateway-endpoint variables from the dispatching shell. The Version history table at the bottom of the same page also lacks a v2.1.203 row.

Current Documentation

agent-view.md describes background-session environment-variable inheritance in two adjacent paragraphs (around lines 503-505):

The supervisor and its sessions authenticate with the same stored credentials as your interactive sessions and make no additional network connections beyond the model API. Provider selection variables such as CLAUDE_CODE_USE_BEDROCK and ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_*_MODEL aliases are read from the shell that dispatched each session and are applied to its worker. A background session doesn't inherit gateway endpoint variables such as ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, the equivalent Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud's Agent Platform, and Microsoft Foundry base URL variables, or a paired ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN from the shell that started the supervisor or from the dispatching shell. The session uses your stored credentials and any env values in the project directory's settings instead. To point background sessions in a project at an LLM gateway, set ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL in that project's .claude/settings.json env block rather than exporting it in your shell.

The page's version-history table ends at v2.1.202:

| v2.1.202 | {/ min-version: 2.1.202 /}A name set with /rename or Ctrl+R on a background session persists when the supervisor stops and restarts its process, instead of reverting to the name the session was dispatched with. |

What's Wrong or Missing?

A. The docs name two categories of variables handled at dispatch time and say nothing about PATH

The two paragraphs above enumerate CLAUDE_CODE_USE_BEDROCK, ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_*_MODEL, ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN, and the analogous Bedrock / Agent Platform / Foundry base URLs. They never mention the PATH variable at all, even though PATH is the environment variable the Bash tool, plugin executable discovery, MCP command: resolution on PATH, and shell-builtin lookup all read. A user who reads this section has no way to learn whether a background session gets the PATH from their interactive shell or from the daemon's launch shell.

The v2.1.203 changelog entry states:

Fixed background agents inheriting a stale PATH from the daemon instead of the dispatching shell, causing missing tools on Windows

After v2.1.203, a background session inherits the dispatching shell's PATH rather than the PATH the supervisor process had when it was launched. Before v2.1.203, a session dispatched from agent view or claude --bg on Windows could be missing tools that the dispatching shell had on its PATH — for example Git Bash entries added by the Microsoft Store or MSI installer, pwsh, per-project node_modules/.bin, or any user-installed CLI added via scoop / chocolatey — because the daemon was launched earlier from a shell with a different or narrower PATH. Nothing in the supervisor section tells an operator that PATH is one of the variables now read at dispatch time, and no version-history row documents when that behavior changed.

B. The fix is platform-agnostic in the docs but the symptom was Windows-only

The change applies to every host, but the reported symptom was Windows-only because Windows users typically extend PATH in the open shell and because the installer paths the changelog entry refers to (Microsoft Store / MSI installs of Git Bash, pwsh) are Windows-specific. A Windows user who moves to v2.1.203 and reads agent-view.md will not learn that the missing-tool symptom they may have hit before the upgrade is now fixed, nor that the fix works by reading PATH from the dispatching shell.

C. The version-history table omits v2.1.203

The Version history table at the bottom of agent-view.md lists v2.1.202 and v2.1.200 but never adds a v2.1.203 row for the PATH-from-dispatching-shell fix. Other v2.1.202 fixes on the same page are summarized inline in this table; the v2.1.203 PATH change is the kind of supervisor-environment-behavior change readers use that table to look up.

Suggested Improvement

Before (lines 503-505, "The supervisor process"):

The supervisor and its sessions authenticate with the same stored credentials as your interactive sessions and make no additional network connections beyond the model API. Provider selection variables such as CLAUDE_CODE_USE_BEDROCK and ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_*_MODEL aliases are read from the shell that dispatched each session and are applied to its worker. A background session doesn't inherit gateway endpoint variables such as ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, the equivalent Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud's Agent Platform, and Microsoft Foundry base URL variables, or a paired ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN from the shell that started the supervisor or from the dispatching shell. The session uses your stored credentials and any env values in the project directory's settings instead. To point background sessions in a project at an LLM gateway, set ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL in that project's .claude/settings.json env block rather than exporting it in your shell.

After:

The supervisor and its sessions authenticate with the same stored credentials as your interactive sessions and make no additional network connections beyond the model API. Provider selection variables such as CLAUDE_CODE_USE_BEDROCK and ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_*_MODEL aliases, along with PATH, are read from the shell that dispatched each session and are applied to its worker. {/ min-version: 2.1.203 /}Before v2.1.203, PATH came from the shell that started the supervisor, so a background session could be missing tools the dispatching shell had on its PATH, such as entries added by the Windows Git Bash or pwsh installer. As of v2.1.203, the session sees the dispatching shell's PATH. A background session doesn't inherit gateway endpoint variables such as ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, the equivalent Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud's Agent Platform, and Microsoft Foundry base URL variables, or a paired ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN from the shell that started the supervisor or from the dispatching shell. The session uses your stored credentials and any env values in the project directory's settings instead. To point background sessions in a project at an LLM gateway, set ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL in that project's .claude/settings.json env block rather than exporting it in your shell.

Also add a row to the Version history table at the bottom of the same page:

| v2.1.203 | {/ min-version: 2.1.203 /}Background sessions inherit PATH from the shell that dispatched them, rather than from the shell that started the supervisor. A session dispatched on Windows after the user added an installer to PATH (for example Git Bash or pwsh) now sees that addition; before v2.1.203 it could be missing those tools. |

Impact

Medium - Makes feature difficult to understand

Additional Context

Affected Pages:

| Page | Line(s) | Context |
|------|---------|---------|
| https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-view | 503-505 | "The supervisor process" — environment-variable inheritance paragraphs |
| https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-view | 654-662 | Version history table — missing v2.1.203 row |

Total scope: 2 affected sections on 1 page.

Version: v2.1.203.

Related fixes already documented in the page: the Version history table already documents three other "background session didn't see X from the dispatching shell" fixes in the same flavor — gateway endpoint variables (v2.1.174), roster.json field preservation (v2.1.200), and dispatch from claude agents booting on a stale model (also v2.1.200 — recorded in the changelog at https://code.claude.com/docs/en/changelog). The v2.1.203 PATH fix is the next entry in that same family of "stale environment inherited from the daemon" bugs and is the natural fit for an entry in the Version history table rather than prose that's hidden inside a paragraph the user has no reason to read.