MCP Server Timeout Bug: Setting 500ms Accidentally Triggered 28-Hour Default

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A developer configuring an MCP server in Claude Code set a 500-millisecond timeout intending a strict half-second limit, but values below 1000ms are silently ignored by the system. When no valid timeout is recognized, the configuration falls through to the MCP_TOOL_TIMEOUT environment variable or its default of approximately 28 hours. The behavior changed in version 2.1.162, when sub-1000ms values previously floored to one second were instead discarded entirely, with no changelog notice. The developer also identified two other silent failure modes: omitting a 'type' field causes a URL-based server to be misread as a stdio server, and project-level MCP servers in untrusted folders are blocked pending approval without any warning. A third-party CLI tool, @quintetkit/ccheck, was built to surface these misconfigurations before they cause runtime issues.

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