Feature Request: Make thinking process text color configurable (red is misleading for developers)

Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Apr 14, 2026 by yiyi-an Closed May 24, 2026

Summary

The thinking process (extended thinking / reasoning text) is currently displayed in red in the Claude Code CLI interface. For developers, red is a strongly established convention that signals errors, failures, or critical warnings. Seeing red text while Claude is simply reasoning causes unnecessary alarm and cognitive confusion.

Problem

  • Red text in terminal UIs universally signals: compilation errors, test failures, runtime exceptions, permission denied messages, etc.
  • When the thinking process appears in red, developers instinctively assume something went wrong.
  • This creates a poor UX especially during long reasoning sessions where the red text dominates the screen.

Proposed Solution

  1. Change the default color of thinking/reasoning text to something neutral or positive — e.g., green, cyan, dim white, or gray.
  2. Allow users to configure the color via settings.json, for example:

``json
{
"thinkingTextColor": "green"
}
``

Why Green (or another non-red color)?

  • Green is already associated with Claude's brand identity.
  • It signals "in progress / working" rather than "error".
  • Cyan/dim is commonly used for informational/debug output in CLIs.

Impact

Low-effort change with high UX impact for all developer users of Claude Code CLI.

Thank you for considering this improvement!

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