Focus mode: tool call output re-renders repeatedly during extended thinking (Orbiting)
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Apr 27, 2026 by brandon-huang-cyera Closed May 1, 2026
Description
When viewMode is set to "focus" in settings, the TUI repeatedly re-renders previous tool call outputs every time the model enters an extended thinking phase ("Orbiting..."). This results in the same block of tool outputs appearing 3-5+ times in the terminal scrollback during a single turn.
Steps to reproduce
- Set
"viewMode": "focus"in~/.claude/settings.json - Give Claude a task that requires many sequential tool calls (e.g., 10+ Bash calls searching for something)
- The model will periodically enter extended thinking ("Orbiting...") between batches of tool calls
- Observe: each time "Orbiting" appears, all previous tool call outputs from that turn re-render below the separator line
Expected behavior
Each tool call output should appear exactly once. The "Orbiting" thinking indicator should not trigger a re-render of already-displayed content.
Actual behavior
The terminal output looks like this pattern repeating:
⏺ Bash(command1)
⎿ output1
⏺ Bash(command2)
⎿ output2
✶ Orbiting… (2m 7s · ↓ 3.8k tokens · thought for 14s)
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
❯
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
⏺ Bash(command1) <-- REPEATED
⎿ output1
⏺ Bash(command2) <-- REPEATED
⎿ output2
⏺ Bash(command3)
⎿ output3
✢ Orbiting… (2m 31s · ↓ 4.8k tokens · thought for 14s)
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
❯
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
⏺ Bash(command1) <-- REPEATED AGAIN
⎿ output1
⏺ Bash(command2) <-- REPEATED AGAIN
⎿ output2
⏺ Bash(command3) <-- REPEATED AGAIN
⎿ output3
The repetition grows with each thinking phase — by the 4th or 5th "Orbiting" cycle, the entire prior tool history re-renders.
Environment
- Claude Code version: 2.1.119
- OS: macOS (Darwin 25.4.0)
- Terminal: iTerm2 (iTerm.app)
- Shell: zsh
- TERM: xterm-256color
- viewMode: focus
- Model: Opus 4.6 via Bedrock
Notes
- Does NOT happen with the initial file-write permission prompt duplication (that's a separate, milder issue)
- Seems specific to focus mode — the re-render logic during thinking pauses may not correctly track what's already been flushed to the terminal
- Purely cosmetic — execution and output correctness are unaffected
- Makes long multi-tool sessions very hard to follow due to scrollback pollution
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