Silent crash on Windows when plugin autoupdate hits an orphaned installed_plugins.json entry

Summary

Claude Code crashes silently on Windows when the background plugin autoupdate hits an orphaned entry in installed_plugins.json whose cache directory has been removed. No error is printed to the terminal, no Windows Error Reporting event fires, and the crash repeats every 2-3 minutes for the lifetime of the orphan.

I hit this consistently for a full day before identifying it. Every fresh claude launch died within 2-3 minutes of activity (sometimes immediately on launch if the autoupdate timer was already due). Switching to claude --bare worked, which pointed at the plugin/skills layer.

Reproduction

1. Install a plugin via the UI (any plugin from the official marketplace; I had code-simplifier@claude-plugins-official)
2. Uninstall the plugin via the UI
3. Manually delete the plugin's cache directory: ~/.claude/plugins/cache/<marketplace>/<plugin-name>/<version>/ — this is the trigger. If the cache dir is gone but the registry entry in ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json still references that path, you have an orphan. (My orphan dir was already auto-marked with a .orphaned_at file, suggesting Claude Code knew the dir was stale but kept the registry entry.)
4. Launch claude --debug
5. Within ~2-3 minutes, the autoupdate timer fires
6. Claude Code exits silently. Terminal is often left in a mangled state (mouse/focus escape codes printed as text).

Death signature in the debug log

The last lines before silence are exactly:

[API REQUEST] /v1/messages source=repl_main_thread       ← user mid-task
Zip extraction completed: 358 files, 3766KB uncompressed  ← autoupdate fired
Plugin autoupdate: checking installed plugins
                                                          ← log ends, process exits

No exception, no [ERROR], no Node uncaught-rejection trace in the log file. Whatever throws during checking installed plugins propagates up uncaught and Node exits.

Workaround

Clear the orphan reference from all three locations:

1. ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json — set "plugins" to {}
2. ~/.claude/settings.json — clear "enabledPlugins" to {}
3. ~/.claude.json — set "officialMarketplaceAutoInstalled" and "officialMarketplaceAutoInstallAttempted" to false (belt-and-suspenders so the autoupdate doesn't try to re-install the marketplace bundle)

After clearing, the same claude --debug runs cleanly indefinitely (verified ~24 hours stable).

Suggested fix

The plugin-check loop should treat a missing installPath (or a directory containing .orphaned_at) as skip + log warning, not an exception path. The current behavior turns user-side cleanup gaps into hard crashes.

A secondary improvement: when the autoupdate process detects an orphan, it could remove the registry entry automatically (or surface a one-line warning to the TUI on next render).

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 ARM64 (10.0.26200)
• Shell: PowerShell 7.6.1 inside Windows Terminal
• Node: v20.19.2 (x64, running under Windows ARM64 x64-emulation)
• Claude Code: 2.1.131 (npm-global at ~/AppData/Roaming/npm)
• Plugins: all manually installed plugins were uninstalled via UI; only the marketplace bundle was auto-installed; one orphan registry entry remained

I had a stale Claude Code 2.1.19 install in a separate Node tree (nvm-for-windows) shadowing the newer one — but that wasn't related to the crash, just confusion. Cleaning up to a single 2.1.131 install made the diagnosis cleaner; didn't fix the crash.

Why this is worth fixing

The combination of "silent exit" + "fires every 2-3 minutes" + "no Windows event" + "intermittent recovery (orphan timer is fuzzy)" makes this look like a network/account/installation issue from the user's perspective. I went through 4 hours of network checks, version chasing, settings resets, and PowerShell upgrades before getting to the actual cause. A single warning log line at the orphan-detection step would have ended the investigation immediately.