RTL (Right-to-Left) text rendering is broken in VS Code extension

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Mar 2, 2026 by sina-parsania Closed Mar 31, 2026

Description

When Claude responds in RTL (right-to-left) languages such as Persian (Farsi), Arabic, or Hebrew, the text is rendered in reverse order in the VS Code extension panel. Words and characters appear mirrored/garbled, making RTL responses completely unreadable.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Claude Code in VS Code
  2. Ask Claude to respond in Persian/Arabic/Hebrew
  3. Observe the output in the chat panel

Expected Behavior

RTL text should render correctly with proper bidirectional (BiDi) text support — right-to-left word order, correct character joining, and proper punctuation placement.

Actual Behavior

RTL text appears reversed/garbled. Words are displayed in left-to-right order, making the response unreadable.

Environment

  • OS: macOS (Darwin 25.3.0)
  • VS Code: Latest
  • Claude Code: Latest

Impact

This affects all users who communicate in RTL languages (Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, etc.), making Claude Code unusable for a significant portion of users in their native language.

Suggested Fix

Add BiDi (bidirectional) text rendering support in the VS Code webview panel. This could involve:

  • Using CSS direction: rtl and unicode-bidi properties for detected RTL text
  • Auto-detecting text direction based on Unicode script ranges
  • Ensuring the rendering engine respects UAX #9 (Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm)

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