[BUG] VS Code extension crashes with OOM error: conversation history accumulates to 700MB+ causing infinite crash loop

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/5024
2. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/6394
3. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/1421

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🤖 Generated with Claude Code

This is specific to Sonnet 4.5:

I am leaving this issue open even though I see some similar issues (Not through VS Code) submitted weeks ago due to this only becoming an issue for me on the v 2.x.x releases. Reverting to 1. 0.127 which was released a few days ago still works perfectly fine, this is the temporary fix for this issue until a permanent fix is committed.

Workaround to temporarily fix:

Back up and remove the project directory

mv ~/.claude/projects/[your-project] ~/.claude/projects/[your-project].backup

Restart VS Code - extension will work again with fresh project

I have exactly the same issue. It is unique to the VS Code extension, Claude Code in the terminal does not load all project history into memory at startup.

I worked around it by clearing my convo history ;-) I expect to have to repeatedly do this until this is fixed.

I'm not running the extension, I'm just running Claude code cli in cursor, and I got an out of memory today on 2.0.1:

⏺ You're absolutely right. Let me rewrite this as a clean, direct implementation plan without the discovery narrative:
RangeError: Out of memory
    at join (unknown)
    at q9Z (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:13450)
    at M (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:11696)
    at Z (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:11951)
    at PgY (/$bunfs/root/claude:947:9184)
    at <anonymous> (/$bunfs/root/claude:948:781)
    at useMemo (/$bunfs/root/claude:36:25924)
    at iI (/$bunfs/root/claude:947:7964)
    at Kw (/$bunfs/root/claude:36:19415)
    at $d (/$bunfs/root/claude:38:42805)

  ERROR  Out of memory

 -     at join (unknown)
 - q9Z (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:13450)
 - M (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:11696)
 - Z (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:11951)
 - PgY (/$bunfs/root/claude:947:9184)
 - <anonymous> (/$bunfs/root/claude:948:781)
 - useMemo (/$bunfs/root/claude:36:25924)
 - iI (/$bunfs/root/claude:947:7964)
 - Kw (/$bunfs/root/claude:36:19415)
 - $d (/$bunfs/root/claude:38:42805)
 - ```

I'm not running the extension, I'm just running Claude code cli in cursor, and I got an out of memory today on 2.0.1: `` ⏺ You're absolutely right. Let me rewrite this as a clean, direct implementation plan without the discovery narrative: RangeError: Out of memory at join (unknown) at q9Z (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:13450) at M (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:11696) at Z (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:11951) at PgY (/$bunfs/root/claude:947:9184) at <anonymous> (/$bunfs/root/claude:948:781) at useMemo (/$bunfs/root/claude:36:25924) at iI (/$bunfs/root/claude:947:7964) at Kw (/$bunfs/root/claude:36:19415) at $d (/$bunfs/root/claude:38:42805) ERROR Out of memory - at join (unknown) - q9Z (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:13450) - M (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:11696) - Z (/$bunfs/root/claude:787:11951) - PgY (/$bunfs/root/claude:947:9184) - <anonymous> (/$bunfs/root/claude:948:781) - useMemo (/$bunfs/root/claude:36:25924) - iI (/$bunfs/root/claude:947:7964) - Kw (/$bunfs/root/claude:36:19415) - $d (/$bunfs/root/claude:38:42805) - ` ``

ahh yes, seems to be specific to Sonnet 4.5. I'm shocked this is still unresolved.

this is still an issue with 2.0.55, i am running the extension, or trying to get it up and running.
Opening a chat causes the extension host to crash.
[[BUG] Claude code extension memory leak issue #12611](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/12611)

Having same issue, I deleted the large jsonl from ~/.claude/projects/-project-dir caused the restart loop to stop! But it causes the history to go away - reading the files, they are the chat history.

Having same issue, I deleted the large jsonl from ~/.claude/projects/-project-dir caused the restart loop to stop! But it causes the history to go away - reading the files, they are the chat history.

did you delete all the json files in the project dir?

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.

Just posting here again to confirm as of just now, this issue is still unresolved and continues happening.

I finally gave up on visual code/cursor. They can't handle the amount of agents/sessions I have open. Went back to ghostty/tmux. total game changer. Using 10% of the memory I was with the visual code/cursor ide's. Turns out it wasn't ever claudes or codexes fault (I was having issues with both the cli's). No the answer people probably want to hear, but I've gone a week straight of power coding with agents (probably 30+ sessions all running at once) and have yet to have a single cli crash, or have to restart anything on my system. That's proof enough for me what the real cause was...

Confirmed fix: The root cause was accumulated conversation history files.

In my case: 955 JSONL files totaling 2GB in ~/.claude/projects/[project-dir]/

Solution:

# Check your history size
du -sh ~/.claude/projects/*

# Delete old conversation history
rm -rf ~/.claude/projects/[your-project-dir]/*.jsonl

After clearing, the VS Code extension works perfectly again. The extension tries to load all history into memory on startup, causing OOM when history accumulates.

Credit to @peterchabs and @sibidharan above for identifying this fix - just confirming it still works in v2.1.31 and adding the diagnostic commands.

Reproduced on:

• Claude Code v2.1.39
• VS Code 1.109.2 arm64
• macOS 26.2
• 502 conversation files

Key finding: VS Code Copilot Chat's Archive feature doesn't prevent OOM

I archived 468/502 conversations via Chat sidebar. Confirmed archived in workspace state DB (state.vscdb):

sqlite3 state.vscdb "SELECT value FROM ItemTable WHERE key = 'agentSessions.state.cache'"
→ 468 sessions with "archived": true  
→ 0 active sessions

VS Code Copilot Chat's archive feature is useless for preventing OOM crashes. It's purely cosmetic UI filtering that happens AFTER files are already loaded into memory.

I had the same issue. My Claude history folder grew to 2.6GB.
Fix: cleared history and kept only the latest 20 conversations (now ~466MB).
Credit to @lachlanhawthorne for identifying a solution.

Problem

Claude extension slow/fails to load due to large conversation history (~2GB+).

The Script

Create scripts/cleanup-claude-history.js:

#!/usr/bin/env node
import { execSync } from 'child_process';
import path from 'path';
import os from 'os';

const KEEP_COUNT = 20;
const PROJECT_DIR = path.join(
  os.homedir(),
  '.claude',
  'projects',
  '-Users-YOUR-PATH-HERE' // Update with your project directory name
);

try {
  const checkDir = `[ -d "${PROJECT_DIR}" ] && echo "exists" || echo "missing"`;
  const dirExists = execSync(checkDir, { encoding: 'utf8' }).trim();

  if (dirExists !== 'exists') {
    console.log('✓ Claude history directory not found');
    process.exit(0);
  }

  const countCmd = `find "${PROJECT_DIR}" -maxdepth 1 -name "*.jsonl" | wc -l`;
  const currentCount = parseInt(execSync(countCmd, { encoding: 'utf8' }).trim());

  if (currentCount <= KEEP_COUNT) {
    console.log(`✓ Claude history OK (${currentCount} files)`);
    process.exit(0);
  }

  const cleanupCmd = `cd "${PROJECT_DIR}" && ls -t *.jsonl 2>/dev/null | tail -n +${KEEP_COUNT + 1} | xargs rm -f`;
  execSync(cleanupCmd);

  console.log(`✓ Cleaned ${currentCount - KEEP_COUNT} old files, kept ${KEEP_COUNT}`);
} catch (error) {
  console.log('⚠ Cleanup skipped');
}

Find Your Project Directory

ls ~/.claude/projects/
# Look for directory matching your project path

Auto-Run Options

1. npm start

"prestart": "node scripts/cleanup-claude-history.js && ..."

2. VSCode (on folder open) - Add to .vscode/tasks.json:

{
  "label": "Cleanup Claude History",
  "type": "shell",
  "command": "node scripts/cleanup-claude-history.js",
  "runOptions": { "runOn": "folderOpen" }
}

3. Daily (3 AM)

crontab -e
# Add: 0 3 * * * node /path/to/scripts/cleanup-claude-history.js

4. Manual

node scripts/cleanup-claude-history.js

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

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.