VSCode extension: extended-thinking blocks have no working expand control and vanish entirely after response completes
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)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
3 Comments
Root cause tracked down in #30958 — this is the same underlying bug, not an independent regression:
Since Opus 4.7, the API defaults thinking blocks to
display: "omitted"(was"summarized"). Claude Code doesn't passdisplay: "summarized"explicitly, sothinkingcomes back genuinely empty. Per the extension's webview source (quoted in https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/30958#issuecomment-4032801766-adjacent comment from athulram7, v2.1.206): the thinking component renders a static non-clickable "Thought for Ns" label with no arrow whenthinkingis empty, vs. a real<details>with a native arrow when it isn't. That's symptom #1/#3 here. Symptom #2 (Ctrl+O opening the OS file picker) is separate: the extension registers no Ctrl+O keybinding on Windows, so VS Code's built-in "Open File" wins.Both documented workarounds (
--thinking-display summarized,CLAUDE_CODE_EXTRA_BODY) are confirmed non-functional as of v2.1.205/206 per the same thread.Deferring to #30958 as the primary tracking issue — leaving this open only for the Windows-specific Ctrl+O keybinding gap, which is a distinct, smaller bug on top of the main one.
Resolved for me — the fix from #30958 (comment: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/30958#issuecomment-4032801766, credit @qishaoyumu) worked:
Add to ~/.claude/settings.json:
{
"showThinkingSummaries": true
}
Then restart Claude Code / reload the VS Code window. Thinking blocks are expandable again.
Note this fixed it on Sonnet 5 — I'd previously (incorrectly) generalized this issue to the Opus 4.7+ "display: omitted" root cause discussed later in #30958, but that's a separate, still-unresolved layer that only applies to Opus 4.7/4.8. This one is just the undocumented showThinkingSummaries default being unset. Closing this issue; the Windows Ctrl+O keybinding gap noted above is still real but minor now that the block itself is fixable.
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