Cannot copy long assistant output from the terminal (works fine in other CLI tools, e.g. Google Antigravity CLI)

Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Aug 21, 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

Description:

When Claude Code prints a long response in the terminal (e.g. a multi-paragraph explanation or report), I am unable to select and copy the full output. This makes it very difficult to reuse long answers elsewhere (documents, emails, other tools) without asking Claude to write the content to a file first as a workaround.

For comparison: I use Google's Antigravity CLI, which is also a terminal-based agent, and copy/paste of long outputs works there without any problem. This suggests the limitation is specific to how Claude Code renders/handles long terminal output, not a general constraint of terminal applications.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Start a Claude Code session in a normal terminal.
  2. Ask a question that produces a long, multi-paragraph response.
  3. Try to select and copy the full response text from the terminal.

Expected behavior:
Long output should be selectable and copyable in full, the same way it works in other terminal-based CLI agents (e.g. Antigravity CLI).

Actual behavior:
Copying long output from the terminal is unreliable/not possible, forcing a workaround of asking the assistant to write the content to a file and send/open it separately instead of just copying from the terminal.

Environment:

  • OS: Linux (kernel 6.8.0-137-generic)
  • Shell: bash
  • Claude Code CLI

Suggestion:
Please look into improving terminal output handling so long responses can be copied directly, matching the experience of other terminal-based CLI agents.

Proposed Solution

Suggestion:
Please look into improving terminal output handling so long responses can be copied directly, matching the experience of other terminal-based CLI agents.

Alternative Solutions

Suggestion:
Please look into improving terminal output handling so long responses can be copied directly, matching the experience of other terminal-based CLI agents.

Priority

High - Significant impact on productivity

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

Suggestion:
Please look into improving terminal output handling so long responses can be copied directly, matching the experience of other terminal-based CLI agents.

Additional Context

Suggestion:
Please look into improving terminal output handling so long responses can be copied directly, matching the experience of other terminal-based CLI agents.

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