VSCode extension: extended-thinking blocks have no working expand control and vanish entirely after response completes

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Jul 12, 2026 by PolinaSh-main Closed Jul 12, 2026

Environment

  • Claude Code VSCode native extension (Windows)
  • Behavior first noticed within the last ~1 week as of 2026-07-12; extension auto-updates, so exact version at onset unknown. Symptom is present on whatever build shipped around/after the 2026-07-11 (v2.1.207) update.

Symptoms (two related issues, same feature)

  1. Dead expand control on collapsed thinking summary

After a response completes, the thinking block collapses to a grey summary line like "thought for 6s". There is no chevron/arrow/disclosure indicator next to it, and clicking on the line does nothing — it does not expand.

  1. Ctrl+O does not toggle thinking visibility in the extension

Per the docs (code.claude.com/docs/en/keybindings.md and vscode-extension.md), Ctrl+O should "expand or collapse every thinking block in the session." In practice, in the VSCode extension, Ctrl+O is intercepted by VSCode's native workbench.action.files.openFile command and opens the OS file picker instead. The extension's own binding for this action doesn't appear to be registered/reachable, and there's no documented command ID to rebind it to something else via keybindings.json.

  1. Thinking blocks are visible while streaming, then disappear (not just collapse) once the response finishes

During active generation, the extended-thinking block is visible and expandable live. Once the response completes, it does not settle into a re-openable "thought for Ns" summary (see #1) so much as become entirely inert/gone — combined with #1, there is no way to get back into a completed turn's reasoning after the fact.

Expected behavior
Collapsed thinking summaries after a completed response should have a working disclosure control (click or keyboard) to re-expand and read the reasoning, consistent with what the docs describe.

Additional notes
No settings.json flag was found that controls this (checked alwaysThinkingEnabled, MAX_THINKING_TOKENS, and the general settings schema — none control post-completion visibility/persistence of thinking blocks). This looks like a UI regression rather than a missing config option.

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