auth login: code prompt does not echo, never says to press Enter, and empty submission returns the same 400 as a bad code

Preflight

• I searched existing issues. This has been reported before and closed without a fix; see "Prior reports" below. #69990 was auto-closed on 2026-08-04 with "Please open a new issue if this is still relevant." It is still relevant.
• Single bug report.
• Version 2.1.212, current at time of filing.

Environment

Claude Code CLI 2.1.212, Windows 11, Windows Terminal. Reproduced in both cmd.exe and PowerShell.

What's wrong

claude auth login prints:

Paste code here if prompted >

The field does not echo. No characters, no masking dots, no cursor movement. Nothing in the prompt indicates the code must be submitted with Enter.

Pasting a code is visually identical to pasting nothing, which is visually identical to a hung terminal. There is no feedback of any kind until you press a key the prompt never mentions.

I lost roughly an hour to this. I concluded my terminal was broken, tried three shells, enabled QuickEdit mode, and went looking for a paste plugin I half-remembered installing. The paste had been working the entire time. I had never pressed Enter.

The part that has not been reported before

Submitting an empty value returns the same error as submitting a bad one.

Pressing Enter on an empty prompt returns:

Login failed: Request failed with status code 400

That is byte-identical to the error for a malformed, mismatched, or expired code. So the error cannot distinguish "nothing was submitted" from "the code was wrong."

This matters because the 400 is the only signal available once you suspect the paste is failing. It actively points away from the real cause: I read it as proof my paste had landed and been rejected, when in fact nothing was being submitted at all. Every subsequent diagnostic step I took was based on that wrong inference.

What should happen

Any one of these would have prevented the entire detour:

1. Change the prompt to Paste code here and press Enter >. (This is exactly what #69990 asked for.)
2. Echo masked characters, or show a character count, so a successful paste is visibly received.
3. Distinguish an empty submission from an invalid code in the error text.

Fix 3 is the cheapest and, in my case, would have been the most useful: an empty submission is knowable client-side without a round trip.

Steps to reproduce

1. On Windows, open Windows Terminal.
2. Run claude auth login.
3. Complete the browser flow and copy the code.
4. Paste at the prompt with Ctrl+V. Observe that nothing appears on screen.
5. Note there is no way to tell whether step 4 worked.
6. Press Enter on an empty prompt instead. Observe Login failed: Request failed with status code 400, the same error as an invalid code.

Prior reports

• #69990 [UX] Add "press Enter" hint to auth code paste prompt. Same platform, same root cause, same suggested fix. A contributor volunteered to fix it in June 2026, no fix landed, auto-closed NOT_PLANNED on 2026-08-04.
• #69978 OAuth login flow gives no feedback when manual code paste is required, whose title also notes that "if prompted" misleads users. Closed, stale.
• #58949 OAuth manual code paste freezes Windows Terminal. Closed, stale.

Three independent reports of the same friction across Windows and Linux, none fixed. The wording is a one-line change.