[VSCode] Ctrl+F in the chat panel only finds text currently rendered on screen
What happens: In the Claude Code VS Code extension chat panel, Ctrl+F only matches text that is currently rendered in (or just beyond) the visible viewport. Messages scrolled further up are never found, even when the exact text is present. In a long session it is effectively impossible to find anything older than a page or two, so any instruction, value, or command given earlier in the conversation becomes unfindable.
Repro:
- Work in a long session (many turns, some large tool outputs).
- Scroll to the bottom, press Ctrl+F, search for a unique string from an assistant message 20+ turns up.
- No match.
- Scroll up until that message is on screen and search again - it matches.
Likely cause: the message list appears to be virtualized (off-screen messages removed from the DOM), so the webview's find has nothing to search. This is inferred from the behavior, not confirmed in source.
Expected: find-in-conversation searches the whole conversation and scrolls to each match, like any document or chat UI.
Environment: Windows 11, VS Code, Claude Code VS Code extension (current release), long sessions.
Related: #77523 (search sessions by content).