[Bug]: Terminal content flickers during long Claude Code sessions (possible buffer issue)

[jerell2isekai]

Current Behavior

When using Claude Code (AI coding assistant via CLI) in a Wave terminal with a long conversation session, the terminal content starts to flicker intermittently. The flickering becomes more noticeable as the session grows longer (more messages/output accumulated). It is unclear whether this is caused by a terminal buffer overflow, excessive re-rendering, or some other issue related to how Wave handles large amounts of terminal output.

Expected Behavior

The terminal should render content stably without any flickering, regardless of how long the session has been running or how much output has been produced.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Open Wave terminal and start a new terminal block.
2. 2. Run claude to start a Claude Code session.
3. 3. Engage in a long conversation with many prompts and responses (20+ exchanges or significant output).
4. 4. Observe the terminal display — flickering of the terminal content becomes visible as the session grows longer.

Wave Version

v0.14.3

Platform

macOS

OS Version/Distribution

No response

Architecture

arm64

Anything else?

• The flickering appears to correlate with session length — short sessions are unaffected, but it becomes apparent after extended use (many rounds of prompts and responses).
• • Suspected cause: terminal buffer handling or excessive re-rendering when output volume is large.
• • • The issue is reproducible by running claude (Claude Code CLI) in a Wave terminal block and maintaining an active conversation for an extended period.

[alxark]

Facing same problem, probably it's better to check problem in another term first.

[sawka]

i think this is caused by the way claude code re-renders the screen. basically it does a wipe of all the content and then a full repaint of the screen (which for long screens can be a lot of bytes pushed). there are fixes for screen tearing in xterm.js 6.0.0, so i'm working on an upgrade that may help solve the problem.