Long-running CLI host process grew to ~16.7 GB RSS over 4 weeks (Windows)

Environment

• OS: Windows Server 2019 Standard (10.0.17763), 32 GB RAM
• Claude Code currently installed: 2.1.229 (the affected process launched 2026-07-16 and ran continuously, so it was on whatever version was installed then - it never restarted to pick up updates)
• Launched from the VS Code/Cursor extension environment

What happened

• A claude.exe session process started on 2026-07-16 stayed alive for ~4 weeks and its working set grew to 16.7 GB (a same-machine sibling session process of similar age was ~430 MB).
• Collateral: host free RAM dropped to 1.5 GB, SQL Server on the same machine shrank its memory target from ~20 GB to 484 MB, and all admin-console DB queries stalled 20-30s in RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE (memory-grant starvation). Killing the process restored everything instantly (free RAM 20.4 GB, SQL target 19.8 GB).
• The process kept running normally otherwise - no crash, no visible errors. It could not be killed from a sandboxed child shell (Access denied); Task Manager as admin worked.
• Note: /bug was not available in this environment, hence the GitHub issue.

Expected: a long-lived idle/background session should not accumulate tens of GB of resident memory.

Repro: unknown - appears to be gradual accumulation on a session left open for weeks. No transcript of the runaway session's activity survives.