[BUG] Alt+V image paste reports "clipboard is empty" on Windows 11 CLI v2.1.131 when clipboard contains a Bitmap

Environment

• Claude Code v2.1.131 (official installer at %USERPROFILE%\.local\bin\claude.exe)
• Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
• Windows Terminal + PowerShell 7
• autoUpdatesChannel: latest
• Bug present since fresh OS install ~7 days ago; persisted across multiple auto-updates

Symptom

Pressing Alt+V (the documented Windows CLI image-paste shortcut per #44499) reports "clipboard is empty" even when the clipboard demonstrably contains a Bitmap.

Repro

1. Win+Shift+S → snip a region (clipboard now contains a Bitmap)
2. In Claude Code prompt, press Alt+V
3. CC reports clipboard is empty

Diagnostic — clipboard is NOT empty at the OS level

Verified via direct .NET interop in both STA and MTA threading modes:

pwsh -STA -NoProfile -Command "Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms; [System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard]::ContainsImage()"
# Returns: True

pwsh -NoProfile -Command "Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms; [System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard]::ContainsImage()"
# Returns: True

So STA-vs-MTA threading is not the cause — the clipboard image is reachable via standard System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard regardless of apartment state.

Cross-CLI confirmation

OpenAI Codex CLI in the same Windows Terminal session, same PowerShell 7 environment, reads the same clipboard and pastes the image successfully. The clipboard contents are genuinely accessible to a sibling Node-based CLI. This isolates the bug to Claude Code's clipboard-read implementation on Windows CLI.

Workaround in use

Saving the image to disk and pasting the file path string into the prompt works (Claude Code resolves the path and caches the image). Direct image-bytes paste via Alt+V does not.

Triage notes — searched for duplicates, none matched

• Not a duplicate of #54902 — that issue is the desktop app (claude.exe GUI), not the CLI binary.
• Not a duplicate of #50552 — WSL + BI_BITFIELDS BMP decode; different platform.
• Not a duplicate of #38807 — closed; opposite scenario (Alt+V captured when user wanted passthrough), from v2.1.83.
• Per #44499 — Alt+V is the documented working shortcut for image paste on Windows CLI; the closure of #44499 confirms this was the expected behavior.