[BUG] [Cowork] AskUserQuestion fails with "Tool permission stream closed before response received" on a single (non-batched) call

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?

What happened

Claude presented an AskUserQuestion dialog with three questions. I answered
the first one and the dialog disappeared. Claude received nothing at all —
not even the answer I had already given — and got:

Tool permission request failed: AbortError: Tool permission stream closed before response received

Happened once. Recovery was Claude re-asking the same questions as plain text,
which worked fine.

How this differs from #60042

#60042 reports the
same error for AskUserQuestion, but specifically when dispatched in a
parallel batch alongside other tool calls. That is not what happened here —
this was a single AskUserQuestion call on its own, with no other tools in
flight. So the failure does not appear limited to the batching path.

Possible cause: response time

Several related reports (e.g. #14229) describe a hard timeout of roughly 60
seconds on pending permission requests, after which the stream closes and the
call fails.

That fits. The dialog had three questions, each with three or four options
carrying multi-line descriptions — genuinely a minute or more of reading before
answering. If the timeout applies to AskUserQuestion the same way it applies
to permission prompts, then any question complex enough to need real thought
will time out, which would make the tool unusable for exactly the decisions it
is most useful for.

I cannot confirm the elapsed time precisely, but "over a minute" is very likely.

Suggestion

If a timeout is involved, AskUserQuestion probably needs a much longer one, or
none — it is explicitly a "stop and think" tool, unlike a yes/no permission
prompt. Partial answers surviving the failure would also help; losing the answer
I had already given made the recovery worse than it needed to be.

Prior reports

Searched before filing. #60042 and #14229 cover adjacent cases but are both
closed as stale, and #60042's parallel-batch condition does not apply here.

<details>
<summary>Environment</summary>

• Cowork mode, Claude desktop app (macOS)
• Version: Claude 1.24012.9 (03c61d) 2026-07-24T04:59:17.000Z
• Mac Mini
• Model: claude-opus-5
• Date: 2026-07-25
• Session: 8bf98dc5-2e65-451b-823b-22820ebe98ed /

5475c59a-0d9c-48aa-9d58-23e47999f2d5

</details>

What Should Happen?

Suggestion

If a timeout is involved, AskUserQuestion probably needs a much longer one, or
none — it is explicitly a "stop and think" tool, unlike a yes/no permission
prompt. Partial answers surviving the failure would also help; losing the answer
I had already given made the recovery worse than it needed to be.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

See above.

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

Claude 1.24012.9 (03c61d) 2026-07-24T04:59:17.000Z

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

_No response_