Memory leak in active sessions with many skills (23GB+ RAM after 30min)

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.29
• OS: macOS Darwin 23.6.0
• RAM: 64GB
• Number of skills/commands: 1,071 files (16MB in .claude/commands/)

Problem

Active Claude Code sessions accumulate massive amounts of memory over time, while abandoned sessions remain at normal levels.

Observed behavior:

| Session PID | PPID | Status | Elapsed Time | RAM Usage |
|-------------|------|--------|--------------|-----------|
| 16393 | 1 (orphan) | Abandoned | 40 min | 145MB ✅ |
| 36415 | 1 (orphan) | Abandoned | 15 min | 148MB ✅ |
| 39581 | 1 (orphan) | Abandoned | 11 min | 146MB ✅ |
| 22728 | terminal | Active | 30 min | 23GB ⚠️ |
| 25636 | terminal | Active | 28 min | 18GB ⚠️ |

Key observations:

1. Normal sessions use ~150MB - Orphaned/abandoned sessions maintain reasonable memory usage
2. Active sessions explode to 23GB+ - Sessions being actively used accumulate memory without bound
3. Pattern is reproducible - Multiple active sessions show the same behavior
4. File descriptors also high - Heavy processes had 1,500-1,700+ open file descriptors

Reproduction context

• Project has 1,071 skill files in .claude/commands/
• Custom hooks configured in .claude/hooks/
• Using Context7 MCP server (but MCP processes themselves use minimal RAM ~30-77MB)
• System reports 98% RAM used, but memory_pressure shows 78% free (macOS memory compression working overtime)

Expected behavior

Sessions should maintain reasonable memory usage (~150-500MB) regardless of activity level, similar to abandoned sessions.

Impact

• System becomes unresponsive during Bash tool operations
• Forces users to restart sessions frequently
• Makes Claude Code unusable on machines with 8-16GB RAM if they have many skills

Additional data

$ memory_pressure
Pages used by compressor: 689819
Pages decompressed: 1185207
Pages compressed: 2339114

The high compressor activity suggests the system is struggling to manage the memory leak.