Feature Request: Enable thinking.display for Claude Code subscription sessions
API users can set thinking.display: "summarized" to receive summarized reasoning content from Claude models with adaptive thinking. Claude Code has a showThinkingSummaries setting (visible in the settings schema) but the server does not honor the thinking.display parameter for subscription-authenticated sessions — only API key sessions receive thinking content.
Use case
As AI-generated code enters production systems, developers need to understand why the model made specific decisions — not just what it output. Debugging AI-authored code without access to the reasoning that produced it is like debugging a binary without source. This is especially relevant as agent workflows scale: Uber reported 11% of their live backend code is now AI-generated, and that number is climbing.
Summarized thinking content would enable:
- Post-session audit of model reasoning for critical code changes
- Debugging when AI-generated code produces unexpected behavior
- Compliance and explainability in regulated environments where automated decisions require documentation
- Developer learning by understanding how the model approaches complex problems
Current behavior
- CC sends
redact-thinking-2026-02-12as ananthropic-betaheader by default - When
showThinkingSummariesis enabled in settings, CC removes the redact flag and setsthinking.display: "summarized"on the request - The server returns a thinking block with an empty
thinkingfield and a signature (used for token accounting) - The same request structure returns summarized thinking text for API key sessions
Requested behavior
Honor thinking.display: "summarized" for CC subscription sessions the same way it is honored for API key sessions. The showThinkingSummaries setting already exists in CC — the server just needs to return the content.
Context
This is not about exposing raw chain-of-thought. The "summarized" display mode already exists and produces concise reasoning summaries appropriate for developer consumption. The infrastructure is built — it just needs to be enabled for subscription auth.
This issue has 3 comments on GitHub. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗