Orphaned processes not cleaned up when archiving chat sessions (VS Code extension)

Description

When archiving chat sessions in the Claude Code VS Code extension, the underlying claude processes are not terminated. They remain running as orphaned processes, accumulating over time and consuming significant RAM.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open VS Code with Claude Code extension
2. Open multiple chat sessions over time
3. Archive old sessions (not actively close them)
4. Check Task Manager / Process Explorer

Observed behavior

With only 2 active chats, there were 29 claude processes running, consuming ~14 GB of RAM. The orphaned processes came from previously archived sessions.

ProcessName      Id RAM_MB
-----------      -- ------
claude        24536   1790
claude        25020   1772
claude        26316   1692
claude         9924   1451
claude        41484    837
claude        33164    791
claude        40400    726
claude        36396    669
claude         7984    656
claude        44324    566
claude        50284    546
claude        50064    524
claude        52656    486
... (29 total claude processes)

Expected behavior

Archiving a chat session should terminate all associated claude child processes (MCP servers, subagents, workers, etc.), same as explicitly closing the chat.

Workaround

Manually kill orphaned processes:

Get-Process claude | Stop-Process -Force

Then reopen the active chat.

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
• RAM: 32 GB
• VS Code extension (not CLI)
• MCP servers configured: Cloudflare, Slack, Stripe