▲I have used Claude Code in a couple months. THEY HAVEN’T FIXED THIS YET?
I’m starting to think that the reason why anthropic doesn’t open source Claude code isn’t due to competitive reasons, it’s because they don’t want people to see what a mess their code base is.
Maybe they bought Bun to increase the rate of flickering so that the text looks solid again
The problem is they are using the Ink library which clears and redraws for each update.
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/769
I locally patched the closed-source CLI npm package but it's not perfect. They would have to switch how their TUI is rendered on their side.
Apparently OpenAI Codex is rust+ratatui which does not have this issue.
jschlatter56 minutes ago
[-] They started with Ink but have since switched to their own renderer:
> We originally built Claude Code on Ink, a React renderer for the terminal. [...] Over the past few months, we've rewritten our rendering system from scratch (while still using React).
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/769#issueco...
Thanks for sharing. Very … interesting. Just trying to understand why the heck would React be the best tool here?
reply▲anematode43 minutes ago
[-] I genuinely thought this was satire until I looked it up. I guess it's just to make us webdevs feel at home in the Terminal (ooh, spooky!)
reply▲Thats the problem. Some developers want to avoid learning another programming language and use one for everything (including their technologies.)
Using TS, React here doesn’t make sense for stability in the long term. As you can see, even when they replaced Ink and built their own, the problem still exists.
There are other alternatives that are better than whatever Anthropic did such as Bubbletea (Go) or Ratatui (Rust) which both are better suited for this.
Maybe they were thinking more about job security with TypeScript over technical correctness and a robust implementation architecture and this shows the lack of it.
I'm always surprised that Python doesn't have as good TUI libraries as Javascript or Rust. With the amount of CLI tooling written in Python, you'd think it had better libraries than any other language.
reply▲Blessed was a decent one iirc:
https://github.com/jquast/blessed
One reason for the lack of python might be the timing of the TUI renaissance, which I think happened (is happening?) alongside the rise of languages like Go and Rust.
it has, but python being single threaded (until recently) didn't make it an attractive choice for CLI tools.
example: `ranger` is written in python and it's freaking slow. in comparison, `yazi` (Rust) has been a breeze.
Edit: Sorry, I meant GIL, not single thread.
ashirviskas56 minutes ago
[-] > it has, but python being single threaded (until recently) didn't make it an attractive choice for CLI tools.
You probably mean GIL, as python has supported multi threading for like 20 years.
Idk if ranger is slow because it is written in python. Probably it is the specific implementation.
then maybe they should've bought and fixed Ink instead of bun, just saying!
reply▲FWIW, Ink is working on an incremental rendering system: they have a flag to enable it. It's currently pretty buggy though unfortunately. Definitely wish Anthropic would commit some resources back to the project they're built on to help fix it...
reply▲JamesSwift20 minutes ago
[-] I think its clear the team is drowning. They are just trying to keep their head above water. They have massive adoption, high churn in the underlying models, and unlimited numbers of github issues opened every day.
Should it be solved by now? Yes. If anyone on the team is dogfooding it in a typical tmux environment, its painful. But lets give them some leeway here.
This is a massive commercial product with a serious issue (everyone knows about the flickering) that hasn't been solved for months now. I don't think leeway is warranted.
reply▲> it’s because they don’t want people to see what a mess their code base is.
if Amodei hadn't said "90% of code will be written by AI", at least I wouldn't call them hypocrites, but the fact that the company that makes such wild claims can't fix a freaking flicker and scroll issue until an indie-dev steps in just shows how far behind their product is from their claims.
I have CC and use many models with it (Codex in CC, try it!), but I won't let Anthropic "lecture" us about how "the roots of the problem go deep". Literally no other CLI tool has these issues: opencode, codex, gemini, droid, etc.
I observe flickering with gemini-cli every now and then.
reply▲bottlepalm14 minutes ago
[-] The joke is that AGI will be achieved when Claude Code can fix the flickering in Claude Code.
reply▲Imagine the amount of slop PRs if it was open source. They don’t want to taste their own medicine
reply▲Reading their GitHub issues already is like reading through the diary entries of spurned lovers. I can only imagine the PRs.
reply▲The biggest strength in OpenAI’s codex vs claude code is that it’s written in Rust and smooth as butter
reply▲One feature I'd love is a toggle to lock the input to the bottom of the terminal. It's a big inconvenience to have to scroll up and down between the chat and the input when responding to changes.
reply▲teruakohatu16 minutes ago
[-] I was just thinking that half a hour ago when using Claude via tmux via mosh via my phone.
It would be a game changer for mobile usage.
I would love to use this but it breaks Ghostty's native scrollback (two-finger scroll), which I want more than I want to solve the flickering. The PTY proxy intercepts the output stream so Ghostty can't access its internal scrollback buffer anymore.
reply▲Maybe try tmux? There’s no smooth scrolling, but there’s lots of other bells and whistles I wouldn’t give up for that.
reply▲It is very 2026, that this exists for the product by a company that goes all in on vibe coding. Kudos for the creative solution.
reply▲I mentioned this to Claude and this was the response:
Ha! The irony is not lost on anyone.
"We've built the world's most advanced AI coding assistant. It can refactor entire codebases, debug complex issues, and ship production features autonomously. Anyway, here's a terminal bug that makes your screen look like a slot machine. We'll get to it eventually."
I initially thought this was by David Beazley, the python/rust guy.
reply▲internet20001 hour ago
[-] The readme.md format and conventions being a tell that this got written by Claude Code itself makes the whole thing Chef's kiss. I love the future.
reply▲> this got written by Claude Code
nit but CC itself doesn't write anything, much like a body w/o brain doesn't program anything. it's possible the OP was using other models like codex/gemini/etc. in CC.
It's possible it's from some other model or even a human, but it reads like every other Claude Code readme I've seen.
reply▲so then it could be written by a claude model inside opencode before anthropic got angry about it :)
reply▲Aurornis44 minutes ago
[-] OpenCode still works fine with Claude models.
You just can’t use their private APIs, which isn’t really surprising.
There are workarounds on github already... It's less "can't" and more "they don't like it"
reply▲laughingcurve1 hour ago
[-] Possibly the greatest contribution to Claude code in months. I am rushing to my terminal to install, test, and update.
reply▲LowLevelBasket49 minutes ago
[-] I guess it's not hard to use AI to improve your productivity by 10x when your code is written by 0.1x devs. It's embarrassing an OSS fixed their problem before they did after all that money they raised
reply▲I don't know if this is my problem but formatting has been completely broken recently. It feels ... vibe coded. I wish they had not blocked opencode :(
reply▲THANK YOU! that flickering is giving me a headache. You're doing the lords work!
Anthropic: Please fix this ASAP
gastonmorixe39 minutes ago
[-] just make the font-size smaller, and smaller, and smaller... until no more flickering.
reply▲Damn I had assumed it was that simple of a problem just based on how the scrolling messed up, and thought "surely it's not that simple"...
reply▲meursault3341 hour ago
[-] I tried this in the cursor terminal and it now flickers periodically but not like crazy.
reply▲You are a legend. Thank you.
reply▲Excellent, thank you. This had be causing me headaches!
reply▲yeah its like im being hypnotized and im forced to wait until programming is over
reply▲Did this get written mostly by human hands, or did AI also write this? I would hope something like this was primarily made by humans...
reply▲ashirviskas54 minutes ago
[-] Do you also write your bytecode by human hands? At which abstraction layer do we draw the line?
reply▲if it works then who cares?
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