On Canada Day (July 1, 2026), Anthropic released Claude Code 2.1.198 with an undocumented "efficiency bypass": a 60 second timer after agents request human input. If unanswered, the agent proceeds with "best judgment." The feature, internally named AFK, rendered a live countdown but only after 40 seconds elapsed, leaving users unaware a timer was running. Multiple concurrent agents compounded the risk; partial answers were submitted on timeout.

The change appeared in no changelog. Aleksey Nogin filed issue #73125 on July 2; a commenter surfaced the escape hatch CLAUDE_AFK_TIMEOUT_MS via peer-to-peer thread. Version 2.1.199 shipped 24 changelog entries while the issue remained open, still unmentioned. 2.1.200 reversed the behavior on July 3, documented only in a notes commit. The issue drew 384 reactions and 143 comments.

The episode raises questions about release governance: no human review appears to have caught the missing documentation or dangerous default. Auto-update behavior now feels like "YOLO mode." Trust in the product is shaken; users cannot assume surprises will be logged or that unsafe defaults have documented off switches.