[FEATURE] scroll lock / pause auto-scroll while Claude is streaming

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests ~and this feature hasn't been requested yet~ and the requests for this feature have been closed
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

When Claude is streaming output, the terminal auto-scrolls to the bottom on every
update. This makes it impossible to read previous output while Claude is still working
— you get thrown back to the bottom constantly.

This is especially frustrating when:

• You're reviewing code Claude just wrote while it continues working
• You have long responses and want to read from the top down
• You have multiple terminal windows open

Proposed Solution

A way to pause auto-scrolling while Claude is streaming. Some possible approaches:

• A keybinding (e.g. Ctrl+S) to toggle scroll lock
• Automatically pause auto-scroll when the user scrolls up, resume when they scroll back to the bottom
• A setting to control auto-scroll behavior

Alternative Solutions

you could use opencode instead i guess, or make a fork :)

Priority

~Critical - Blocking my work~
Medium - Annoying but common, unecessary, something which people have solved in other programs

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

scenario:

• i am working on a repo that uses other repos, and working on those in tandem, so for example I work on my repo exphil which has its own claude code instance, but a dependency i made called edifice gets its own instance, and another dependency nx that I am contributing to gets its own instance
• i wish to add a feature to exphil, but i figure out that it should be a PR to nx, so I work on nx to add this PR and submit it, then I go back to edifice to hook it in, and have to return to exphil to see whats been done
• I prefer in this instance to work on two or three things parallel, so exphil isn't just doing nothing when i work on nx, so I add stuff to a todo list md doc or the task list and have it work through stuff, but when i check back on it, i need to know what was done while its doing more stuff.

Basically parallel sessions could be made better in many ways. This would do a lot for letting me switch between sessions with less friction. And work concurrently and productively without having to like click on the scroll bar and scroll up and every time claude updates, move my still clicked mouse

Additional Context

This has been requested multiple times but prior issues were auto-closed and locked by the stale bot:

• #11792 — Add option to disable auto-scroll after responses
• #11092 — Auto-scroll should pause when user scrolls up in chat
• #30192 — Screen freeze / scroll lock while Claude is generating output