iOS Remote Control: "Pondering…" indicator persists after the response completes

Environment

• Claude Code 2.1.220
• Desktop session hosted in the VS Code extension
• Viewed from the iOS app over Remote Control

What happens

The "Pondering…" activity indicator stays on screen in the iOS app after the assistant's response has fully arrived and nothing further is happening. It does not clear on its own and persists across subsequent turns.

What I expected

The indicator clears once the response has been delivered and no work is in flight.

Verification that no work is actually in flight

Checked from the session host:

• Every tool call ran in the foreground and returned
• No background processes were launched
• No subagents were spawned
• No watchers or monitors were started
• The session directory under ~/.claude/projects/<project>/<session-id>/ contains only tool-results — no task state and no background-process artifacts
• No logs directory exists under ~/.claude/

There is no registered work on disk that the indicator could be reflecting.

Impact

When driving a desktop session from a phone, this indicator is the only signal for whether a long-running task is actually in progress. If it stays on after every turn, it stops carrying information, and there is no way to tell a genuinely running job from a finished one without switching to the desktop.

Note

/tasks does not appear to be available in this environment, so there was no in-app way to check registered tasks and rule this out from the phone.