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

  1. Set "viewMode": "focus" in ~/.claude/settings.json
  2. Give Claude a task that requires many sequential tool calls (e.g., 10+ Bash calls searching for something)
  3. The model will periodically enter extended thinking ("Orbiting...") between batches of tool calls
  4. 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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