20 FEB 2026
David asks: Asked whether MCP connectors are always-on or require per-chat activation
David challenged the agent's claim that granular's MCP connector would be automatically active in every Claude session, prompting a research task to verify per-surface activation behavior.
The agent had claimed that Claude Code and Claude Desktop connectors are loaded on every session automatically. David wasn't satisfied and pushed back:
no but im asking even for the post-install. "Gate 2: Per-conversation activation... Claude Code & Claude Desktop: connectors declared in config are loaded on every session automatically. No per-chat toggle." are you sure? doesnt seem right. go do research on this as of april 30th. for claude and codex too and chatgpt
The research confirmed David's skepticism was correct: Claude.ai web uses a per-chat toggle (not always-on), ChatGPT requires Developer Mode plus per-session enablement, and only Claude Code and Claude Desktop approach always-on behavior. The finding had direct implications for granular's activation strategy — surfacing the "Granular project" template as a mitigation for claude.ai's per-chat friction.