Why does the TextExpander MCP timeout after a few hours? This makes it impossible to set up scheduled tasks that use the MCP. Did I miss setting somewhere? I don’t have this issue with any of the other MCPs that I have connected.
Thanks!
FWIW, this is what Claude Cowork says:
This is a well-documented issue, and the root cause is almost certainly OAuth token expiration, not a timeout in the traditional sense. Here’s what’s happening:
The core problem: TextExpander MCP authenticates via OAuth, and MCP OAuth tokens expire within hours/days, causing tool calls to return 401 errors or “trouble completing this action” — requiring manual reconnection.
Why TextExpander specifically, not your other MCPs: Your other connected MCPs (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Superhuman) use Google/Superhuman OAuth flows that issue long-lived refresh tokens and handle silent renewal. When MCP server OAuth tokens expire, all tool calls to that server fail until you manually re-authenticate — and there’s no warning before expiry, no automatic refresh, and no way to hook into the failure to trigger re-auth. TextExpander’s OAuth implementation apparently issues shorter-lived tokens without robust refresh handling on the client side.
The underlying Claude-side bug: Claude Code fails to read the stored refresh token from Keychain when an access token expires, forcing full re-authentication rather than silently refreshing — meaning you must manually re-authenticate roughly every 24 hours whenever the access token expires.
What to do right now:
When TextExpander stops responding in Cowork, the fix is to re-authenticate the MCP connection. In Cowork/Claude Desktop, you can typically do this via /mcp command to reconnect. Users report needing to run /mcp to reconnect, sometimes multiple times before it takes effect.
Longer-term: This is an active open bug (GitHub issue #43789, #25245, #29718). There’s no clean workaround yet on the Anthropic side. You could check if TextExpander offers any API key-based auth alternative to OAuth, which would sidestep the token expiry problem entirely — but their current MCP setup appears to be OAuth-only.
Geetings,
I would like to thank you for your feedback about our MCP server. By default, a session should last at least seven days as long as there is activity once a week. Let me know if you are seeing shorter times. Also, can you give me more details about your use case? Are you using Claude, OpenAI, Microsoft CoPilot Studio or another client?
Regards,
Andy
Yes, I am seeing shorter times even if there is activity during the week (which is always the case). I am generally using Claude Cowork, but occasionally will you Chat for quick research items. I have not tried using other AI services with the TextExpander MCP.
Hi @JacquesLaufer I’m so sorry to hear you’re having issues with your MCP session times. If you reach out to us at support@textexpander.com we can dig in with you. You can also expect faster response times, we can gather logs, the whole 9 yards 
Hope to chat with you soon!
All the best,
Nick
@JacquesLaufer First, we want to say thank you for letting us know about this issue.
Second, I have good news to share!
The development team just deployed a change to the MCP server that should help the connection issue you were seeing. I hope this helps! Don’t hesitate to reach out in the future!
All the best,
Nick
Thanks, Nick. I updated Claude this morning and reconnected the TextExpander MCP. I hope this fixes the connection-dropping issue. I will report back.
-- Jacques