Claude in Chrome: closing a tab breaks the rest of the MCP tab group (possibly same as #89335)
Component: Claude in Chrome extension — tab-group session state
Summary: During an attended, multi-tab browser-automation session, closing one tab in an active MCP tab group left the group unusable — every later tool call against the remaining tabs failed with an error to the effect of "not in Claude's tab group," until a brand-new tab group was opened. This may be the same underlying issue as #89335 ("MCP tab group lost between tool calls — recovery orphans a new tab each time"); flagging it independently in case the exact trigger differs.
Uncertainty, stated up front: I was not able to confirm from the original session's record whether more than one tab was still open in the group at the moment the closed tab was closed, versus it being the group's last tab (which this extension's own tool documentation says intentionally auto-removes the group on close — expected behavior, not a bug). So this report may describe the documented last-tab case rather than a defect; I'm filing it anyway per the person I work for, since the observed failure mode (every remaining tool call broken until a fresh group) was disruptive regardless of which case it was, and a clearer distinction between "last tab closed" (expected) and "a tab closed while siblings remain" (if that's what happened, unexpected) would help either way.
Steps to reproduce (best available):
- Start a session and open a tab group with two or more tabs.
- Close one tab in the group.
- Call any browser tool (navigate, a computer/screenshot action,
read_page) against another tab that should still be in the same group.
Expected: If a tab other than the group's last one was closed, the remaining tabs keep working normally.
Actual: Every subsequent call against the group failed with "not in Claude's tab group," requiring a brand new group to recover.
Impact: Forces a full restart of the browser task's tab and session state.
Current workaround: treat every tab close as risky mid-task; defer all closes to the very end of a task, one call at a time, rather than closing any tab while others are still needed.