Pasting image >5MB freezes session with no recovery path

Bug Description

Pasting an image larger than 5MB into the Claude Code chat (VS Code extension) causes the session to completely freeze. The UI becomes unresponsive — cannot delete the image, cannot send other messages, cannot interact with the chat at all. Closing and reopening the VS Code tab resumes the same frozen session. The only recovery was manually deleting the conversation .jsonl file from ~/.claude/projects/.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Claude Code in VS Code
2. Paste a screenshot/image larger than 5MB (e.g., a native resolution game screenshot at ~9MB)
3. Attempt to send the message

Expected Behavior

• Graceful rejection with a clear error message like "Image exceeds maximum size (5MB). Please resize and try again."
• User should be able to dismiss the error and continue using the session
• Ideally: auto-resize the image to fit within the limit before sending

Actual Behavior

• Session freezes completely
• Error message references "API limit" which is confusing for subscription (non-API) users
• No way to remove the image or recover the session from the UI
• Only recovery: manually delete the .jsonl conversation file from the filesystem

Environment

• Claude Code VS Code extension
• Windows 11
• Subscription user (not direct API)
• Image was ~9MB PNG screenshot

Additional Context

• The 5MB limit is an underlying model input constraint, but the error message suggests it's an API billing/usage limit, which is misleading for subscription users
• Previously pasted many smaller screenshots without issue — this only triggers with larger images
• The session freeze is the critical issue — even if the limit is necessary, the UI should handle it gracefully

🤖 Generated with Claude Code