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Claude Code 2.1.71: /loop Brings Cron Jobs to Your Terminal

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Claude Code can now run recurring tasks. The new /loop command turns your terminal into a lightweight task scheduler.

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Just two days after Claude Code 2.1.69 shipped the MCP Manager and Voice Mode in 20 languages, Anthropic is back with another release. And version 2.1.71 has a feature many developers have been waiting for.

/loop: Recurring Prompts

The new /loop command does exactly what the name suggests: it runs a prompt or slash command at regular intervals. The syntax is dead simple:

/loop 5m check the deploy

That checks your deploy status every 5 minutes. Supported intervals are seconds (s), minutes (m), hours (h), and days (d). Since cron runs in the background, anything under a minute gets rounded up to the nearest full minute.

Smart detail: recurring tasks automatically expire after 3 days. No forgotten loop running forever in the background.

What Else Is New

Beyond /loop, version 2.1.71 brings a few other welcome changes.

The Voice Mode push-to-talk key is now rebindable through keybindings.json. The bash auto-allowlist has been expanded with commands like fmt, comm, and seq — fewer annoying confirmation dialogs in daily use.

On the bug fix side: startup freezes for Voice Mode users are resolved, OAuth token refresh runs more cleanly, and forked conversations no longer accidentally share plan files.

Why This Matters

/loop sounds like a small feature, but it changes how you use Claude Code. Instead of one-off tasks, your terminal becomes a running assistant. Monitor deploys, run tests on a schedule, check log files — all without a separate monitoring tool.

Combined with the MCP Manager from 2.1.69, Claude Code is increasingly becoming a full development hub. And the release pace is impressive — multiple releases per week is now the norm.


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