Messages disappear from terminal display during conversation after v2.1.89 update

+1 This is getting extremely annoying. Every week there is something breaking

+1 I am also getting this behavior.

+1 Same issue here.

Environment:

• Claude Code: 2.1.89
• Terminal: Ghostty
• OS: macOS (Darwin 25.2.0)
• Shell: zsh
• Model: Opus 4.6 (1M context)

Additional context:

• Tested with both CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1 (fullscreen rendering) and without — same behavior in both modes
• Earlier messages disappear during tool-heavy conversations, scrolling up cannot recover them
• Context usage is low when it happens, confirming this is not autocompact
• Was working fine before updating to 2.1.89

Environment:

• Claude Code: 2.1.89
• Terminal: VSCodium integrated terminal (editor location, not panel)
• OS: Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 (10.0.26100) — Hyper-V VM
• Shell: bash
• Model: Opus 4.6 (1M context), high effort
• Plugins: 50+ enabled
• Plan: Claude Max

What we ruled out:

1. Not autocompact — /context showed 8% usage (76k/1M), autocompact buffer at 33k (fires at ~967k)
2. Not CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER — confirmed unset
3. Not terminal scrollback — increased terminal.integrated.scrollback to 100,000 (default was 1,000). Truncation persisted
4. Not /buddy — disabled with /buddy off, fully restarted VSCodium. Truncation persisted
5. Not autocompact (env override) — set DISABLE_AUTO_COMPACT=1 in ~/.claude/settings.json env block, restarted. Truncation persisted

Behavior:

• Messages disappear during tool-heavy work (file reads, git diffs, multi-tool calls)
• Claude Code header stays visible at top — everything between header and recent output vanishes
• Scrolling up does not recover them
• Claude still has the conversation internally (/context shows messages at ~46k tokens) — display only
• Was working fine on previous versions with the same plugin and terminal setup

Environment:

• Claude Code: 2.1.89 (auto-updated)
• OS: macOS
• Terminals: Ghostty, Terminal.app (both affected)
• Shell: zsh
• Model: Opus 4.6 (1M context)
• Install method: npm

Reproduction:
Same behavior here. In a tool-heavy session (many WebSearch + Agent calls), terminal scrollback shrinks from ~1000 lines to ~150-180 lines. Earlier messages and responses are completely gone from scrollback. Context usage was low (~15%) when this occurred — not autocompact.

What I tested (none of these fixed it):

1. DISABLE_AUTO_COMPACT=1 in settings.json env — no effect
2. Restarting the session — scrollback shrinks again after a few exchanges
3. Two different terminals (Ghostty + Terminal.app) — same behavior on both

This is a display-only issue. Claude still remembers the full conversation internally.

confirming on windows 11 + windows terminal + bash shell, 2.1.89. transcript disappears mid-session at ~11% context usage (opus 4.6 1M window). scrolling up shows nothing - messages are gone from rendered output, not just past terminal buffer.

tested CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=0 in settings.json env block - no effect, same behavior. matches what others are reporting here.

downgrading to 2.1.87 as workaround for now. this is a significant regression for longer sessions where you need to reference earlier output

Additional report — same issue on Linux (Fedora KDE Wayland)

Experiencing the same behavior. Conversation history vanishes from terminal mid-conversation at ~25% context usage — definitely not autocompact.

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.89
• Model: Opus 4.6 (1M context)
• OS: Fedora 43, Linux 6.17.12 (Wayland)
• Terminal: Konsole + tmux
• Shell: zsh

Notes

• Initially suspected /buddy (companion feature) was the cause, but aligns with the v2.1.89 regression described in this issue
• Scrolling up in tmux does not recover the messages — they are fully gone from terminal output
• Context is preserved internally, only the display is affected

+1 confirming this is cross-platform (macOS in OP, Linux here).

+1 This is getting extremely annoying. Every week there is something breaking

@blazephoenix ya, this is why I'm using codex more and more. It has bugs, but not constant regressions. Does anthropic not do proper E2E testing for claude code?? It's not hard to build if you have infinite tokens... like, y'know, anthropic does, building claude code with claude code.

Since APPARENTLY their claude-code-powered github automation is also broken, here are related issues:
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/42002
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/41965

And related comments:
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/16310#issuecomment-4167577827
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/2479#issuecomment-4167578136
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/28077#issuecomment-4168086958

Yes I am finding this extremely frustrating too. Would love a fix...

Same issue here. Here's what I'm experiencing in detail:

Environment

• Claude Code: 2.1.89 (installed via npm)
• OS: macOS 26.3.1 Tahoe (arm64, Apple M5 Pro)
• Terminal: iTerm2 3.6.9
• Shell: zsh 5.9
• Node: v25.8.1

Symptoms

1. User prompts disappear — After Claude finishes responding, my original question is no longer visible in the terminal. It was visible while Claude was processing, but gone once the response completes.

1. Assistant responses also disappear — Not just user prompts, but previous assistant responses (including tool call results) are cleared from the terminal output as the conversation progresses.

1. Scrolling up doesn't recover them — The messages are completely gone from the terminal buffer, not just scrolled off screen.

1. Conversation context is retained internally — Claude still remembers previous messages and can reference them, so this appears to be a rendering/display issue only, not a context loss.

1. Happens consistently — Every conversation since updating to 2.1.89. Was not present on 2.1.87.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start a new Claude Code session in terminal
2. Ask any question and wait for the full response
3. Ask a follow-up question
4. Observe that the previous exchange (both user prompt and assistant response) has been cleared from the terminal display

This was not happening on the previous version (2.1.87). Downgrading is not ideal given the npm packaging incident on 2.1.88.

Man this is getting so annoying. Is there any update now where something doesn't break? And it's there any testing at all happening?

Scroll back is essential for when Claude gets confused about things it has said or done.

For me, removing screen flicker is not worth the loss of scroll back.

For me export CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1 does seem to work.

Much thanks to Anthropic for the flag.

See @limsaehyun's comment for a clean fix below: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/41814#issuecomment-4177854695

I encountered the same issue and just resolved it as follows:

~/.claude/settings.json

"env" : {
...
"CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER" : "1"
},

This is really frustrating. Every couple of turns, session history scrollback is wiped. Affecting our whole org. Thanks @sphacker83, CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER worked immediately for me (even in active sessions!)

I encountered the same issue and just resolved it as follows: ~/.claude/settings.json "env" : { ... "CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER" : "1" },

Thanks this fixed it temporarily but the scrolling behaviour is way more annoying. Better than nothing I guess :)

Same issue here; https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/42136

I encountered the same issue and just resolved it as follows: ~/.claude/settings.json "env" : { ... "CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER" : "1" },

To my surprise, this also gets rid of the verbose mode token count at the bottom right. C'mon anthropic. You're working on an IPO?!

Environment:

• OS: Windows 11 Home (10.0.26200)
• Terminal: PowerShell
• Claude Code version: 2.1.89

Behavior:
Conversation viewport shrinks during active sessions, earlier messages/responses become inaccessible without any compaction cycle triggering. Approximately one screen-height of content remains visible;
everything above it is gone from the scrollable area.

Reproduction notes:

• Happens across multiple parallel sessions, not isolated to one
• Resuming the conversation (claude --resume) temporarily restores visibility, but the pattern returns within a few exchanges
• No terminal resize involved — window stays the same size throughout
• This started immediately after updating to 2.1.89; did not experience this on prior versions

Not compaction: No compaction indicator appears, Claude still references earlier conversation content correctly, this is purely a display/rendering issue where the terminal buffer loses earlier content.

+1

same issue, both on windows WSL and macOS

+1

The problem persists in v2.1.90.

+1

+1 Please fix it as soon as possible, I thought it was my hook problem today, and it took half a day to investigate

This is INSANELY annoying, please fix ASAP. Persists on 2.1.90 update.

Confirming on macOS Tahoe + Apple Silicon, both iTerm2 and Terminal.app.

Environment:

• Claude Code: v2.1.90 (installed via ~/.local/bin/claude, auto-updated)
• Model: Opus 4.6 (1M context) — claude-opus-4-6[1m]
• OS: macOS 26.3.1 (Build 25D771280a), Darwin 25.3.0, arm64
• Chip: Apple M1 Pro, 32 GB RAM
• Shell: zsh 5.9
• Node: v22.20.0, npm 10.9.3
• Terminals tested: iTerm2 3.6.8, Terminal.app 2.15 — same behavior in both
• Displays: LG HDR 4K (3840x2160) + Built-in Retina XDR (3024x1964) + external

portrait (2160x3840)

• Plan: Claude Max
• Hooks: 6 configured (PreToolUse, UserPromptSubmit, SessionEnd, Stop,

SessionStart, PreCompact)

• MCP servers: 0 active in settings.json (project-level MCP via Melchizedek)
• iTerm2 scrollback: Unlimited (confirmed in both profile settings and plist)

Reproduction:

1. Start a new Claude Code session on v2.1.90
2. Perform tool-heavy work (file reads, git operations, multi-tool parallel

calls, agent spawns)

1. At ~10-12% context usage, earlier user prompts and assistant responses

disappear from terminal

1. Scrolling up does not recover them — they're gone from the terminal buffer

entirely

1. Same behavior in both iTerm2 (unlimited scrollback) and Terminal.app — rules

out terminal scrollback limits

Ruled out:

• Not auto-compact — context at 10-12%, well below threshold
• Not terminal scrollback — iTerm2 set to unlimited, same behavior in

Terminal.app

• CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER not set — haven't tested yet
• DISABLE_AUTO_COMPACT not set — not relevant at 10-12% context

Observation: Messages vanish in real-time as new output streams at the bottom —
visible as the top of the conversation being consumed line-by-line during tool
output. This is a display-layer issue; Claude retains full conversational memory
internally.

I downgraded to v2.1.87, I also moved back to Terminal instead of Ghostyy, and issue still remains... Doesn't quite make sense.

I’m experiencing the same issue on v2.1.89. I’ve tried a couple of workarounds:

1. Exiting the current session and running claude --continue restores the hidden conversation.
2. Checking the local history JSON file also allows access to previous messages.

However, this is quite disruptive during focused work. It would be great to have a proper fix for this soon.

I'm also experiencing this issue on v2.1.89. Messages (both user prompts and assistant responses) disappear from the terminal during conversation. Scrolling up doesn't recover them. This was not happening on v2.1.87.

using Claude Code v2.1.90 on the terminal and experiencing this. please fix this. very annoying.

+1 Same issue here.

Environment:

• Claude Code: 2.1.90
• Terminal: Bash
• OS: Ubuntu Linux (6.17.0-19-generic)
• Shell: bash
• Model: Opus 4.6 (1M context)

Context usage is low when it happens — not autocompact. Worked fine before v2.1.89.

+1

Same for me 2.1.90

This is crazy bug, come one guys..

Same issue here.

• OS: Windows 11 Pro
• Claude Code model: Opus 4.6 (1M context)
• Auto-compact: disabled (false)
• Context usage when it happens: ~150k tokens (well below the 1M limit)

The entire conversation history visually disappears mid-session, as if /clear was triggered automatically. It happens especially when multiple agents are launched. The conversation seems to still work internally, but the UI loses all previous messages.

This started happening very recently (April).

Same issue here.

Environment:

• Claude Code: 2.1.90
• OS: macOS (Darwin 23.2.0)
• Shell: zsh
• Model: Opus 4.6 (1M context)

Workaround:
Setting CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1 in ~/.claude/settings.json resolved the issue immediately.

{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER": "1"
  }
}

Thanks @sphacker83 and @bwinter for the fix.

Yes, I noticed the same thing. And it almost happens - it happens so fast. I was reading something and I scroll down and then I can't scroll back up to re-verify what I just read. It's ridiculous.
This happens in tmux where I give a... I have a million lines of a scrollback buffer in tmux and they manage to f it up

Same issue, please fix!

I just lost critical information. Switching to codex for a while

same issue for me, cant see the history so it is almost useless now if you have several sessions or if you take a break and come back to the sessions - you wont know what they were doing. i hope they fix it ASAP

Same issue on Linux PopOS!

WSL also has this problem.

v2.1.90 — still broken, still unusable for real work.

The conversation history is reduced to ~10 lines of scrollback. You cannot review what the tool has done, you cannot trace its reasoning, you cannot verify its actions. This is not a cosmetic issue — it fundamentally breaks the ability to work with Claude Code in any professional capacity.

We rely on Claude Code daily for production development. Since this regression, we're actively evaluating alternatives. A coding assistant whose output you can't read is not a coding assistant.

CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1 does not resolve it. This needs a hotfix, not a backlog slot.

Environment: macOS Darwin 25.4.0, v2.1.90, zsh

We're honestly glad to see this issue getting attention — it confirms you're aware that conversation history matters. But here's the irony: this bug explains a lot about Claude Code's quality trajectory.

When your own team uses Claude Code to build Claude Code, and the terminal eats the scrollback after a few exchanges, you literally cannot see when Opus takes a wrong turn. The model confidently hallucinates a fix, you can't scroll up to verify what it actually did three turns ago, and the session looks clean. Everything looks fine — because the evidence is gone.

This isn't just a display bug. It's a feedback loop that masks regressions: you ship with Claude Code → Claude Code hides its own mistakes → you ship more regressions → repeat. The weekly breakage pattern that users keep pointing out in the comments here? This might be a contributing factor.

We love Claude Code. We build plugins on top of it, we use it daily for production work, we've invested heavily in the ecosystem. But "we can't see the conversation history" is not a minor UX annoyance — it's a blind spot in your own development process.

Please treat this as a P0.

Yeah same... my chat history is now gone in some long running convos. And this is not a problem with my terminal program. Just started happening in the last day or two. Running v2.1.90

I to have been experiencing this issue all day with 2.1.90 running on Windows 11 and a PowerShell terminal. I would also experience issues with a resumed conversation losing latest history and taking me back to earlier in a session.

I downgraded to 2.1.87. It appears 2.1.88 is not a valid version and results in a 404.

CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=0 does NOT work for me in version 2.1.90.
This must be properly fixed !

I believe the fix is the new "no flicker"

Environment: Claude Code v2.1.90, iTerm2 (unlimited scrollback), macOS (M2)

Experiencing the same issue. During a long session:

• Did NOT exit or restart Claude Code
• No context compaction occurred (auto-compact is disabled, context window still had room)
• Switched to a different window, came back, and earlier conversation output was gone
• Scrolling up shows the Claude Code splash screen at the very top - meaning the terminal buffer was cleared at some point mid-session
• The conversation context itself was preserved (Claude still knew the history), only the terminal display was lost

iTerm2 scrollback is set to unlimited, so this is not a terminal buffer limit issue.

CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=0 does NOT work for me in version 2.1.90. This must be properly fixed !

CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1 did work for me though. Mind you, they need to fix the bug, but trying the new experimental no flicker mode resolved it for me (Linux).

Wildly annoying, please fix!

I'm also experiencing this issue.

## Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.91
• Model: Opus 4.6 (1M context)
• OS: Arch Linux, Linux 6.19.6 (Wayland)
• Terminal: Yakuake (Konsole) + tmux
• Shell: fish

I hit this same problem and built a workaround as part of my c plugin.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ec5c14c9-cb07-43d3-9a3f-e698aae43a93

Two skills that solve this:

tower-watch - launches a live mirror of your conversation in a split terminal pane. It reads the JSONL transcript directly, so it has everything: your messages, Claude's responses, tool calls, diffs. It survives /clear, /compact, and scrollback loss.

tower-play - interactive TUI for browsing and searching through the session.

You can grab just these two skills standalone without the full plugin:

npx skill add bllshttng/c

Not a fix for the underlying issue, but it means the scrollback problem stops mattering for now until they get a fix going. The only downside is that you're using up some valuable terminal panel real estate for this.

My Claude says issue #41132 reports the same symptoms — VS Code extension completely unresponsive, reinstall doesn't help, no error messages. That user spent 28 hours debugging before finding the fix. Two approaches:

Approach 1 (from #41132, tested): rm -rf ~/.claude then re-authenticate in VS Code. 2 minutes. ⚠️ WARNING: this PERMANENTLY DELETES all memory files, session history, settings, and plugin config. Back up first if you have anything you want to keep. This approach was tested and confirmed working by the #41132 author.

Approach 2 (my Claude's suggestion, untested): mv ~/.claude ~/.claude-backup then re-authenticate. If it fixes the issue, copy back specific files you need from the backup (e.g. settings.json, memory/). If it doesn't fix the issue, restore with mv ~/.claude-backup ~/.claude — nothing lost. ⚠️ This is a theoretical improvement we haven't tested in practice — the backup/restore may reintroduce the corrupted state if the problematic file is among what you copy back.

is this fixed?

Hi everyone.

I'm the original reporter of this issue. After updating to v2.1.97, I can no longer reproduce the terminal auto-clearing behavior that was previously occurring. The scroll,back history seems to be preserved as expected now.

Could those of you who were also experiencing this issue confirm whether it's been resolved on your end as well with the latest version (v2.1.97)?

If the consensus is that this is no longer an issue, I'd like to go ahead and close it. Thanks!

Hi everyone. I'm the original reporter of this issue. After updating to v2.1.97, I can no longer reproduce the terminal auto-clearing behavior that was previously occurring. The scroll,back history seems to be preserved as expected now. Could those of you who were also experiencing this issue confirm whether it's been resolved on your end as well with the latest version (v2.1.97)? If the consensus is that this is no longer an issue, I'd like to go ahead and close it. Thanks!

Fixed on my end.

@kang1027 I believe this may have been fixed sooner. Maybe even with 2.1.93. Glad you are back up and running!

I just encountered this on v2.1.101

v2.1.104 also has this problem,pls open again.

@maaku, @weidwonder

I just encountered this on v2.1.101 v2.1.104 also has this problem,pls open again.

Hey folks, OP here.

For me this issue got resolved somewhere around v2.1.100+ and I haven't been
able to reproduce it since, so I can't dig into it on my end anymore. But
since some of you are still hitting it, I'd like to update this issue with
fresh details so the Anthropic team has something concrete to look at.

Could you share a bit more?

• Claude Code version you're on (claude --version)
• Did you try a clean reinstall (full uninstall + reinstall, not just an

update)? Did it change anything?

• OS / terminal / shell
• Exact repro steps — what you typed, what you expected, what actually

happened

• A screenshot or short screen recording would be super helpful if you can

grab one

• Any relevant logs from ~/.claude/ (redact anything sensitive)

Once I have that I'll update the issue body with the latest repro info.
Thanks 🙏

@kang1027 I've found that 2.1.107 has resolve this issue on my mac laptop.

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.