[BUG] Workspace trust dialog never appears in the VS Code extension (shown via CLI), so project-scope plugins / project .claude/settings.json are silently skipped

[BUG] Workspace trust dialog never appears in the VS Code extension (shown via CLI), so project-scope plugins / project .claude/settings.json are silently skipped

Summary

The Claude Code workspace trust dialog is shown when launching via the CLI (claude in a directory), but is never shown when using the VS Code extension. As a result, a workspace launched only through the extension stays untrusted (hasTrustDialogAccepted: false), and everything gated behind workspace trust — project-scope plugins (<repo>/.claude/skills/<name>/ with a plugin manifest) and project .claude/settings.json hooks — is silently skipped. There is no in-editor way to grant trust.

Environment

• Claude Code: 2.1.170 (also reproduced with extension 2.1.172)
• VS Code extension: anthropic.claude-code 2.1.170 / 2.1.172 (darwin-arm64)
• VS Code: 1.123.0
• OS: macOS 15.7.4 (arm64)

Steps to reproduce

1. Take a repository that has not been trusted yet (its entry in ~/.claude.json has hasTrustDialogAccepted: false, or no entry).
2. Open that repository in VS Code and start Claude Code through the VS Code extension (not the integrated terminal CLI).
3. Observe: no workspace trust dialog appears.
4. Now cd into the same repository in a terminal and run claude (CLI):
5. Observe: the workspace trust dialog appears and can be accepted (which sets hasTrustDialogAccepted: true).

Reproduced consistently across 3 separate untrusted repositories via the extension (dialog never shown); the same repos show the dialog via CLI.

Expected

The extension should present the same workspace trust prompt the CLI does, so users can grant trust and have project-scope plugins / project .claude/settings.json load.

Actual

No trust prompt in the extension → workspace remains untrusted → project-scope plugins and project settings hooks are skipped with no user-visible reason. Per known debug-log signatures, this manifests as lines like:

Trust not accepted for current directory - skipping plugin installations
Skipping SessionStart:startup hook execution - workspace trust not accepted

Impact

Teams that distribute tooling via project-scope plugins or project .claude/settings.json cannot rely on it for VS Code extension users — those artifacts never load because trust can't be granted in-editor. The only workarounds are launching once via CLI per repo, or hand-editing hasTrustDialogAccepted in ~/.claude.json (undocumented; see #720).

Related issues

• #12227 (open) — same downstream consequence (untrusted → plugins/hooks skipped), but reproduced in the CLI with a "trust not persisting" root cause rather than "dialog never appears".
• #61782 (closed as duplicate) — identical "trust dialog never appears" symptom, but on the Claude desktop app's Code tab, not the VS Code extension. Same class of bug, different surface.
• #36403 (closed as duplicate) — IDE trust acceptance not persisted to ~/.claude.json.

This appears to be the VS-Code-extension instance of the trust-dialog-never-renders class of bug (cf. #61782 for the desktop app), and does not seem to be filed separately yet.