n8n 2.40.0 preserves empty-text Anthropic thinking blocks across tool calls and enforces execution timeouts on stuck queue jobs

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Released 2026-09-15, the AI Agent node fix preserves Anthropic thinking blocks with empty text across tool calls (#38302), a shape that otherwise breaks multi-turn extended-thinking conversations. The core changes include executing MCP toolkit members on workers, enforcing the execution timeout for stuck jobs in queue mode (#36258), bounding the wait for the workflow publication lock, allowing a fallback model alongside the primary on AI nodes, merging system messages for strict providers, and consolidating secret redaction in @n8n/utils to cover more credential shapes. The queue-mode timeout and publication-lock bound are the ones worth reading if you run n8n at scale.