Conversation search silently does nothing for queries shorter than 3 characters

Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 1 comment · opened Sep 7, 2026

What happens

In the desktop app (Code tab), the in-conversation search (Ctrl+F) does not run at all for queries of 1-2 characters. No match counter appears, the up/down arrows stay greyed out, and no message explains why — it is visually indistinguishable from "0 results found".

Steps to reproduce

In a conversation containing both the strings F1 and F11:

| Query | Length | Result |
|---|---|---|
| dossierJ | 8 | 11 matches (substring, case-insensitive — works as expected) |
| F11 | 3 | 8 matches |
| F1 | 2 | no counter at all, although both F1 and F11 are present |
| le | 2 | no results, in a conversation full of French text |

The first two rows show that search is a case-insensitive substring match, so F1 should match both F1 and F11. Only the query length differs.

Expected

Either search for 1-2 character queries, or make the threshold visible — showing 0/0, or a hint such as "3 characters minimum". As it stands, the user concludes the text is absent from the conversation, which is wrong.

Why it matters

Short identifiers are a legitimate search target: issue tags (F1, F2), register names, flags, single-letter variables. Searching F1 and being told nothing is there — while F11 a few lines below returns 8 matches — is actively misleading rather than merely limited.

Environment

  • Claude Code desktop app, Code tab
  • Windows 10 Pro 19045
  • Version 1.46388.4

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