Feature request: setting/env var to disable periodic task-tool reminders (with measured token cost)
Summary
Re-raising the ask from #26038 (closed): a dedicated knob — e.g. disableTaskReminders: true in settings.json or CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_TASK_REMINDERS=1 — to suppress the periodic 'The task tools haven't been used recently… consider using TaskCreate/TaskUpdate…' system reminders, without disabling the task tools themselves.
New data: measured cost in a long-running orchestrator session
We run long-lived Claude Code orchestrator sessions that track work through an external system (issue tracker + append-only ledgers) by deliberate design, so the built-in task list stays empty. Auditing one session transcript (253 MB, ~113K lines):
- task_reminder-class attachments: 12.5 MB across 1,380 injections (~9 KB avg) — injected against an empty, intentionally unused task list.
- For scale, that bucket alone is roughly 3M token-equivalents of context churn over the session's life — re-consumed after every auto-compaction.
The reminder is valuable for default workflows, but for sessions with an alternative tracking system it is pure overhead with no off-switch short of CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TASKS=false, which also removes the tools (and it is unclear whether that flag affects background-task notifications, which we depend on heavily).
Ask
- A settings.json key or env var to disable (or rate-limit) the reminder injection only.
- Alternatively: suppress the reminder automatically when the task list has been empty for N consecutive reminders — a heuristic that costs nothing for default users.
Related: #26038 (same ask, closed), #41091 (reminders disrupting multi-step work).