Thinking blocks not expandable in VSCode extension on macOS

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened May 15, 2026 by marketingmaniacs Closed May 18, 2026

Environment

  • Claude Code VSCode extension v2.1.142 (darwin-arm64)
  • macOS (Darwin 24.6.0)
  • Extended thinking enabled (Effort: Medium)

Problem

Thinking blocks appear as a non-interactive bullet labeled "Thought for Xs" between user messages and assistant responses. There is no way to expand them and view the reasoning content:

  • The bullet/label is not clickable — no hover state, no click handler
  • No keyboard shortcut works: Ctrl+O and Cmd+O do nothing for this
  • The Command Palette has no Claude command related to expanding/collapsing thinking
  • Inspected package.json of the installed extension — none of the claude-vscode.* commands target thinking visibility

Expected

Either a clickable thinking block (like claude.ai web) or a documented keyboard shortcut to expand thinking content within the VSCode native extension.

Workaround

Use the terminal CLI (claude), where thinking is rendered inline and expanded by default.

Impact

Users on macOS using the VSCode extension cannot inspect the model's reasoning, which reduces trust and debuggability — especially relevant now that adaptive extended thinking is on by default.

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