Compact display mode for tool calls (collapse Bash/Write to one-line summaries)

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened May 16, 2026 by belyk1 Closed Jun 15, 2026

In long Claude Code sessions, tool calls (especially Bash and Write) render with the full command body + result panel. At scale across an agent fleet making many tool calls per turn, this produces significant visual noise in the transcript and consumes context-window space.

Feature request

A settings.json option or /-command that collapses tool calls to a single-line summary by default (tool name + brief identifier — e.g., Bash: printf ... >> .claude-stop-log or Write: C:\path\to\file.md), expandable on-demand for inspection.

What's missing today

  • No outputStyle, toolDisplay, transcriptVerbosity, or compactTools key in settings.json
  • No CLI flag (--verbose expands; nothing for the reverse)
  • No env var
  • No /-command
  • viewMode: "focus" collapses context panels but does not affect tool input/output rendering

Use case

Multi-agent fleet workflows where users want to see what changed in the world (files shipped, decisions made) rather than every intermediate tool invocation. Tool calls remain useful for audit trail (session JSONL records them regardless of display) but are visually noisy in the live transcript.

Suggested shape

  • settings.json key like toolDisplay.compact: true (or similar)
  • Per-tool override (e.g., compact Bash/Write but not Read, since Read output is often the substance the user wants to see)
  • Expand-on-click in interactive sessions; full render in --print non-interactive mode preserved

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