Companion (buddy) speech text not available outside TUI

Status Fixed / completed
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 3 comments · opened Apr 1, 2026 · closed Apr 1, 2026

Summary

The companion/buddy speech bubble text (e.g., Umbra the capybara) gets truncated with … at narrow terminal widths (e.g., 60 cols). The full text is not available anywhere — not in terminal output, not in the conversation JSONL, not via any hook or API.

I built a logger (umbra) using script -qf + pyte to capture Umbra's speech from the TUI output, hoping to recover the text after the …. But the truncation happens inside Claude Code before the text reaches the terminal stream — the full text is never emitted.

Example

At 60 columns, Umbra's speech renders as:

(°oo°) "*ears droop* `defaultWi…"

There is no way to read the rest of that text.

Request

Either:

  • Don't truncate the companion speech — let it wrap to multiple lines, or provide a way to expand/scroll the bubble
  • Log companion speech to the JSONL as a distinct message type (e.g., type: "buddy") so the full text is recoverable
  • Expose it via a hook event (e.g., BuddySpeech event with the full text)

Environment

  • Claude Code v2.1.89
  • Linux (Ubuntu), terminal width 60 cols
  • Companion: Umbra (capybara)

View original on GitHub ↗

This issue has 3 comments on GitHub. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗