Feature Request: Inline diff editing before acceptance in CLI terminal

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Feb 22, 2026 by mahessh Closed Feb 26, 2026

Summary

When Claude proposes a file edit in the CLI terminal, the user can only accept (y), reject (n), or type feedback for Claude to revise. There is no way to manually edit the proposed diff before it's applied to the file.

Use Case

Minor tweaks (typos, wording changes, small adjustments) are often faster to fix by hand than to describe to Claude and wait for a revised proposal. Currently the workflow requires:

  1. Accept the edit
  2. Ask Claude to make the small fix
  3. Review the new diff
  4. Accept again

This adds unnecessary round-trips for trivial changes.

Proposed Solution

Add an option at the diff approval prompt to open the proposed change in the user's $EDITOR before writing to disk. For example:

  • y — accept as-is
  • n — reject
  • e — open proposed text in $EDITOR for manual editing, then apply on save

Alternative Approaches

  • Open the proposed new text in a temp file with $EDITOR, apply the user's version on save/exit
  • Integrate with terminal-based diff tools like vimdiff to show old vs. new side-by-side with editing
  • Allow a configurable hook that intercepts the diff content before it's written

Current Workarounds

  • Type feedback at the prompt to ask Claude to revise (works but slow for trivial fixes)
  • Reject the edit, manually open the file in another terminal, edit, then continue
  • Use VS Code or JetBrains extensions (but these also don't support inline diff editing)

Environment

  • Claude Code CLI (terminal)
  • macOS / Linux

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