[BUG] Assistant text preceding an AskUserQuestion call in the same turn is never displayed (terminal CLI)

Status Open

Reported on v2.1.202

Maintainer reply ✓ Yes — bcherny

Workaround ✓ Mentioned in thread ↓

Activity 3 comments · opened Jul 7, 2026

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (bcherny, collaborator) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

Environment

Claude Code version: 2.1.202
Platform: macOS (Darwin 25.5.0), terminal CLI (zsh)
Model: claude-fable-5
Mode: plan mode active during the session

Bug Description

When the assistant emits a markdown text block and then calls the AskUserQuestion tool in the same turn, the text block is never displayed to the user. Only the question widget is rendered. The text does not appear before the widget, and it also does not appear after the user answers the question.

How this manifested

In a real session, the user asked for an investigation. The assistant (per plan-mode workflow guidance, which instructs ending turns with AskUserQuestion or ExitPlanMode) repeatedly wrote substantial findings/reports as text and then ended the turn with an AskUserQuestion call. The user saw only the questions, never the findings — across at least four consecutive turns. From the user's perspective the assistant was "asking questions without ever answering", leading to escalating frustration ("You haven't told me anything. I don't see a report!") even though the transcript contained full reports before each question.

The problem was only discovered when the assistant ended a turn with plain text and no trailing tool call — that message rendered fine.

Steps to Reproduce

Start claude in a terminal (plan mode makes it easy to trigger, but any AskUserQuestion use should do).
Prompt something that makes the model write a substantive text answer and then ask a clarifying question via AskUserQuestion in the same assistant turn.
Observe the rendered conversation.

Expected Behavior

The assistant's text emitted before the AskUserQuestion tool call is rendered above the question widget (and remains in the scrollback after answering).

Actual Behavior

Only the AskUserQuestion widget is shown. The preceding assistant text is silently dropped from the visible conversation.

Impact

Silent information loss. This is especially damaging in plan mode, where the built-in workflow explicitly instructs the model to end every turn with AskUserQuestion or ExitPlanMode — so any analysis, findings, or reports written in the same turn as a clarifying question are systematically hidden from the user. It also breaks the documented pattern that answers/reports should be in the final message of a turn.

#74237 (VS Code: AskUserQuestion modal visually covers the conversation — different surface; this report is about the terminal CLI never rendering the text at all)

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

mdickinson · 1 month ago

See also #66960, which seems like the same issue.

cyril4j · 1 month ago

Confirming another occurrence of this on 2.1.206 (macOS Darwin 25.5.0, terminal CLI/zsh, model claude-fable-5) — so it is still present after 2.1.202 and is not specific to plan mode.

In our session the assistant wrote a multi-paragraph analysis and then called AskUserQuestion in the same turn to ask which of three proposed fixes to apply. Only the question widget rendered — the analysis text never appeared, neither before the widget nor in scrollback after answering. The user replied "you did not print your analysis" via the Other option; the assistant re-printed the analysis and asked again with AskUserQuestion in the same turn, and the text was dropped a second time. It only became visible once the assistant ended a turn with plain text and no trailing tool call, matching the workaround described in the original report.

Notable detail: the answers the user typed into the question's "Other" field did reach the model, so the round-trip works — it is purely the rendering of assistant text preceding the tool call that is lost.

bcherny collaborator · 15 days ago

Thanks for the detailed report. Confirmed / reproduced on 2.1.233 (macOS, terminal CLI).

What we tried: in a fresh directory, asked Claude to run a quick ls, write a two-paragraph report, then ask a follow-up with AskUserQuestion in the same turn.

With the default Opus model the report rendered above the question and stayed in scrollback — no issue.
With Fable 5 the report never appeared, before or after answering, and it is also missing from the saved session transcript. Only the intro line, the tool call, and the question widget were shown.

So this is specific to Fable 5 rather than to AskUserQuestion or plan mode: the model's user-facing text is arriving in a form the CLI treats as hidden reasoning, so nothing is displayed. Whether the fix belongs on the model/API side or the client is still being worked out — we're following up with the model team. This also matches #66960 and #74260.

Workaround for now: ask Claude to end the turn with plain text (no trailing tool call), or use a non-Fable model for that session.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code