Image dimension error blocks ALL responses instead of gracefully degrading

Bug Description

When a conversation contains an image exceeding 2000px dimension limit (for multi-image requests), every subsequent response becomes the same error message, making the session completely unusable:

An image in the conversation exceeds the dimension limit for many-image requests (2000px).
Run /compact to remove old images from context, or start a new session.

The user cannot interact with Claude at all — every input, regardless of content, returns the same error. The session is effectively bricked until the user manually runs /compact or /clear.

Steps to Reproduce

1. In a Claude Code CLI session, read/view a large image (>2000px)
2. Continue the conversation until more images or content accumulates
3. At some point, every response becomes the dimension limit error
4. User input is completely ignored — even simple text like "hello" returns the same error

Expected Behavior

• Auto-resize images exceeding the dimension limit before sending to the API
• Or: skip/remove the oversized image and continue the conversation normally
• Or: at minimum, the error should only affect the specific API call, not permanently brick the session — subsequent messages without image references should work normally

Actual Behavior

The error blocks ALL API calls for the entire session. The user is trapped in a loop where no input produces any useful response. /compact works as a workaround but the user has to know to try it — and if /compact itself triggers the same API path, it may also fail.

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.96
• OS: macOS (Darwin 24.6.0)
• Installation: native binary

Suggested Fix

Before sending the conversation to the API, pre-process images to:

1. Detect images exceeding the multi-image dimension limit
2. Either auto-downscale them to fit within limits, or
3. Remove them from the context with a notice, rather than failing the entire request