The async AI + sync approval bottleneck is real. One thing that helped me: stop being physically desk-bound during those wait times.
I built ForkOff to solve this - when Claude needs approval, push notification to your phone, one-tap approve from anywhere. Turns out you don't actually need to be at your desk for most approvals.
The fast mode helps with speed, but even faster is letting the AI work while you're literally anywhere else. Early access: forkoff.app
(And yes, the pricing for fast mode is wild - $100 burned in 2 hours per some comments here!)
Interesting investigation! Claude Code's Xcode integration is impressive, but one workflow friction I've noticed: you're still stuck at your desk waiting for approval prompts.
I've been working on exactly this problem - ForkOff sends push notifications to your phone when Claude needs approval, so you can actually leave your machine while it works. Turns out the async AI + sync approval bottleneck is a common pain point.
Would be interesting to see if Xcode's implementation has any hooks for remote approval workflows. The MCP tools you extracted look promising for that.