[FEATURE] Bring back the previous thinking was displayed (prior to version 2.0.0)

Resolved 💬 23 comments Opened Sep 29, 2025 by OhadRubin Closed Jan 15, 2026

Preflight Checklist

  • [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
  • [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

The previous way in which thinking was displayed was great, I don't understand why you had to change that.
Also the TODOs require ctrl+, this brings less transparency to the user!
If any other companies should show the model thinking traces like you do.
Stop changing usability defaults without a way to rollback.

Proposed Solution

make the default behaviour toggleable.

Alternative Solutions

_No response_

Priority

Critical - Blocking my work

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

_No response_

Additional Context

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

23 Comments

kkudumu · 9 months ago

Came here looking for this as well...

Oichkatzelesfrettschen · 9 months ago

Ah here we go. I submitted feedback about thinking via /feedback and it pointed me here to report my issues. The thinking system is tab on and tab off with no immediately clear mode toggle as with using think, think hard, think harder prior for various levels. tab tab tab tab tab just toggles off and on instead of cycling through the levels, as expected.

I have one tab which has the prior version; and think, think hard, think harder continue to work there, so the issue is front-end UX rather than than a backend limitation.

tjx666 · 9 months ago

Yes, I want to know how claude thinking

Emasoft · 9 months ago

Yes! I really can’t work without being able to follow the model train of thought! 🙏

ctrlbrk42 · 9 months ago

Add a env variable to make it permanently visible

davidjson · 9 months ago

You can downgrade via npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code@1.0.128 to display thinking if you don't rely on the new features.

normalnormie · 9 months ago

"Stop changing usability defaults without a way to rollback."
Couldn't have said it better

tqwhite · 9 months ago

Showing text then hiding it is an awful experience. I see stuff, start reading it, then it goes away, I scroll up to see if it's still there, the display changes below so I am confused.

Moving text around the screen is horrible. I'm reading something then it zips up the terminal window. Where was I? I have to reread the thing to find my place. I lost time and am confused.

With the previous version, while Claude was working, I would read the thinking and activities, note inconsistencies or get new ideas. I could interrupt and offer guidance. It made Claude a beautiful, interactive tool. I not only had control but felt confident I know what was happening.

Now it's a black box. You killed the pleasure.

Revert these changes. The tool is ruined.

atrawog · 9 months ago

This new gui change is press Ctrl+O to show thinking stupid. Why dear Anthropics has nobody learn from the task list not showing up complains?
People WANT and NEED inside into what Claude is doing not press Ctrl+O to show thinking GUI chances the serve no press Ctrl+O to show thinking purpose at all.

OmniZenRaj · 9 months ago

New CLI needs to stop auto hiding parts of what I am trying to read. Please revert to pre 2.0 version of CLI output. Thanks

Nordwolf · 9 months ago

I think it's bad when mass-market companies do opinionated changes that do not fit a large part of their userbase - but that is at least "justifiable" when the users are the product.

However when it's a professional. paid tool - such opinionated changes ruin workflows and productivity. If you want to introduce a feature to hide thinking - make it a feature, even make it default, but do not take away the option that is so widely used.

aleks-apostle · 9 months ago

I wrote a simple script that toggles the expanded thinking traces by default until Anthropic patches this:
https://github.com/aleks-apostle/claude-code-thinking-patch

thomas-schweich · 9 months ago

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/8477 and https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/9099 do appear to be genuine duplicates. Which one should we be looking at/reacting to upvote this feature request? I'm commenting here because it's the lowest issue number.

Chain-of-thought/thinking is one of the things that makes Claude models stand out (though the newer GPTs are pretty good at it too now). I'd think Anthropic would want to show it off. I like that I can quickly tell if the model is going off the rails by monitoring it. I was definitely disappointed to see it go in the 2.0 version of Claude Code.

tjx666 · 9 months ago

I highly doubt the Claude code team can't see the GitHub issues. They probably just work on features they are interested in, and after finishing them, they search if there are similar requests and then close the issues.

gruntlord5 · 8 months ago

I would also like this added, its pretty critical to seeing how the AI is going to execute what I ask vs what it tells me

github-actions[bot] · 7 months ago

This issue has been inactive for 30 days. If the issue is still occurring, please comment to let us know. Otherwise, this issue will be automatically closed in 30 days for housekeeping purposes.

saeedesmaili · 7 months ago

+1, don't close this until it's properly resolved by anthropics.

github-actions[bot] · 6 months ago

This issue has been automatically closed due to 60 days of inactivity. If you're still experiencing this issue, please open a new issue with updated information.

marcindulak · 6 months ago

This issue was closed incorrectly despite recent human comments. This behavior of the bot is reported at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/16497. Please upvote that issue, so maybe it gets noticed.

anthrotype · 6 months ago

yes, please keep this open (as well as the dozens of other similar/duplicate issues about bringing back the old inline thinking)!

in the meatime, I asked Claude to write a skill to keep this patch updated every time a new claude code is released: https://github.com/aleks-apostle/claude-code-patches/pull/9

saeedesmaili · 6 months ago

I guess Anthropic doesn't care, their policy is to close any issue after 60 days!

marcindulak · 6 months ago

I think Anthropic is unaware of the https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/16497 problem.

The current behavior of the bot is to close any issue that has "This issue has been inactive for 30 days" bot warning, independently whether a human comments are present afterwards.

There is still a hope that this behavior of the bot will be changed if anyone from Anthropic reads the issue.

github-actions[bot] · 5 months ago

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.