Claude mascot appears pink instead of orange — UI stuck on 256-color rendering

What happens

The Claude mascot (the pixel art character on the welcome screen) appears pink/salmon instead of its intended orange color. This affects all terminals — Konsole, Kitty, custom terminal apps, with or without tmux.

Expected vs actual

| Expected (orange #da7756) | Actual (pink #d78787) |
|---|---|
| The warm orange Claude brand color | A pinkish/salmon color that looks off |

Root cause

After deep investigation, I found that Claude Code's UI framework (Ink) renders using 256-color mode (chalk level 2) regardless of terminal capabilities or environment settings.

The mascot color #da7756 (RGB 218, 119, 86) gets quantized to the nearest 256-color palette entry — color 174 (#d78787) — which is visibly pink rather than orange.

Evidence: Capturing escape sequences from the tmux pane buffer (tmux capture-pane -e -p) shows the mascot uses only \x1b[38;5;174m (256-color) and never \x1b[38;2;218;119;86m (true color), even though syntax highlighting in the same session correctly uses true color (38;2;R;G;B) sequences.

What doesn't fix it

• export FORCE_COLOR=3 — confirmed present in /proc/<pid>/environ, no effect on UI colors
• COLORTERM=truecolor — no effect
• tmux Tc / RGB terminal features — no effect (true color passthrough works fine for other content)
• The terminal itself renders #da7756 correctly when sent as a raw true color escape sequence

Environment

• Claude Code v2.1.81
• Fedora (Linux 6.17), Konsole + tmux 3.5a (also reproduced without tmux)
• Terminal confirmed to support true color

Impact

The Claude brand mascot looks wrong on every terminal that correctly renders the 256-color palette. It's a subtle but noticeable visual issue that makes the welcome screen look off.

Suggested fix

Have Ink respect FORCE_COLOR=3 / COLORTERM=truecolor for its chalk level (or default to level 3 when the terminal supports it), so chalk.hex("#da7756") emits true color sequences (\x1b[38;2;218;119;86m) instead of 256-color approximations.