fix(terminal): the PTY and the browser terminal must never disagree about size

Issue #464, "text gets muffled sometimes, in both TUI default and fullscreen".
The screenshot is not a dropped frame or a frozen renderer — it is arithmetic.
Claude Code's TUI wraps its frame at the width the PTY reported and erases the
previous frame by walking the cursor up the rows it believes that frame took. A
browser terminal of a different width makes each logical line occupy more
physical rows than Ink counted, so `eraseLines(n)` clears too few and the new
frame paints over rows nothing erased: doubled lines, and short tool summaries
sitting inside longer prose rows with the prose's tail still visible.

Reproduced against this repo's own xterm before changing anything — a 120-column
PTY against a 62-column terminal renders every wrapped line twice. `test/
terminal-pty-geometry.test.ts` pins that, and pins the clean render at matching
widths beside it, so the assertion cannot be satisfied by code that fixes
nothing.

Four ways the two drifted apart, none of them observable from either end:

1. `fitAddon.fit()` resizes xterm to `proposeDimensions()` RAW while every
   server-facing path reported those floored at 40x10. Measured in Chrome at
   430px: font size 44 proposed 13 columns, the server was told 40, and xterm
   stayed at 13. Three call sites each did their own fit-then-floor, and two
   re-read the proposal after the fit — `_shrinkPaddingToFit()` runs exactly
   there, so the container had moved.
2. `throttledResize` (keyboard up) and `sendResize` (session detached into its
   own window) reflowed locally and withheld only the SIGWINCH. That is the one
   combination that cannot be right: a reflow nothing is rendering for buys
   nothing and costs correctness. Both now withhold everything, and the
   keyboard's settle timer still sends the one resize that stops the PTY going
   stale.
3. `setFontSize`/`setFontFamily`/`setFontWeight` move the cell size — a geometry
   change — and told the server nothing at all, so raising the font on a phone
   left the CLI wrapping at the old column count.
4. `Session.resize` DECLINES a small-viewport request while a desktop connection
   holds an active sizing claim, and said nothing, because resize was write-only.

`syncTerminalGeometry()` is now the one function that may change the terminal's
size: it fits, floors and applies as a single step, so the numbers xterm holds
are the numbers the server is told. A test sweeps every module for a bare
`fit()` on the main terminal, and finds exactly one — the owner's own.

For (4) the client cannot win, so it is told the truth instead: both transports
answer a resize with `session.ptyCols`/`ptyRows` (`{"t":"zc"}` on the socket,
the body of the resize POST) and `_onPtyGeometryReport` adopts them. A terminal
that keeps a shape the PTY refused does not render "too narrow", it renders
garbled. Adopting can leave the pane wider than the screen and the container is
`overflow: hidden`, so `.pty-oversized` grants horizontal reach for exactly as
long as the mismatch lasts: correct-and-reachable beats correct-and-clipped
beats garbled. That rule sets both overflow axes and its own `touch-action`
because mobile.css loads later and sets `.terminal-container { overflow:
visible; touch-action: none }` — a bare `overflow-x` would leave overflow-y
computing to `auto` and hand the browser a vertical scroll container the
terminal's touch handler knows nothing about.

Verified in Chrome at 430px against a live server, with a desktop client holding
the claim: the phone adopts 198x43, gets `overflow-x: auto` / `overflow-y:
hidden` / `touch-action: pan-x`, 758px of reach to the right, and keeps its own
vertical scrolling. The pre-fix build was measured in the same harness for the
control.

Two things this deliberately does not do. It does not change who owns the pane
size — the desktop still wins, and `_startMobileResizeRetry` still takes it back
once that goes idle. And `throttledResize` still holds the PTY's shape for the
whole keyboard animation rather than sending a SIGWINCH per step; that decision
predates this and was not re-tested here.

Also in this commit, Ark0N's third-pass review items on #431:

- The response viewer's byte-buffer fallback and `_onSessionClearTerminal` both
  used the no-param `/terminal` form, capped only by `terminalBufferMaxBytes`
  (32MB) — the largest body the frontend asks for anywhere. One carried no
  deadline at all and the other got the 15s tail budget. Both now take the
  full-history budget.
- A `?full=1` capture that outruns its deadline falls back to the bounded tail.
  The pane is blanked before that fetch, so an abort used to leave a black
  rectangle, discard the queued live output and never reach `_connectWs`. A
  failed load now still opens the socket, says one dim line where the content
  would have been, and clears the tab's spinner — which nothing did, so a failed
  select left `aria-busy="true"` set forever.
- `_wsOutputGapSession` is cleared at the repaint that settles it, not in a
  `finally` that also ran on the catch. A reconcile that threw, or hit the new
  deadline — the flaky link the marker exists for — dropped the gap with nothing
  to retry it. `ws.onopen` no longer clears it up front either.
- The replay-clear invariant is pinned in the gate, which is the drift this PR
  exists to fix: `_resetTerminalForReplay` must be a queued write and nothing
  else, and no module may blank the terminal with a `clear()+reset()` pair.
- `DIAG_ENTRY_MAX_CHARS` replaces the hardcoded 300, bound through a local
  first: `CodemanDiag?.x` still throws a ReferenceError when the identifier was
  never declared, and that is the one function in the app that must not throw.
- panels-ui's two kill-all clears route through the same helper, and the
  xterm-version guard's comment says "resolved lockfile version" rather than
  "dependency RANGE", which is what it has pinned since the last round.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Rounak Datta
2026-09-22 13:07:33 +05:30
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent abd39318e6
commit abf1d1f1ca
17 changed files with 934 additions and 124 deletions
+13
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@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
---
"aicodeman": patch
---
fix(terminal): the PTY and the browser terminal must never disagree about size (#464)
"Text gets muffled sometimes" was arithmetic, not a dropped frame. Claude Code's TUI wraps its frame at the width the PTY reported and erases the previous frame by walking the cursor up the rows it believes that frame took, so a browser terminal of a different width makes the erase come out short and each repaint paints over rows nothing cleared — the doubled lines and half-overwritten prose in the report.
Four ways the two drifted apart, all silent: `fitAddon.fit()` resized xterm to the raw proposal while every server-facing path reported it floored at 40x10 (measured in Chrome at 430px — font size 44 proposed 13 columns, the server was told 40, xterm stayed at 13); `throttledResize` and `sendResize` reflowed locally while deliberately withholding the SIGWINCH; the font setters moved the cell size and told the server nothing; and `Session.resize` declined small-viewport requests under an active desktop sizing claim without telling the asking client, because resize was write-only.
`syncTerminalGeometry()` is now the one function that changes the terminal's size — it fits, floors and applies as a single step, and a test sweeps every module for a bare `fit()`. Both transports answer a resize with the geometry the PTY actually holds, and the client adopts it; a pane wider than the screen earns horizontal reach for as long as the mismatch lasts, because correct-and-reachable beats correct-and-clipped beats garbled.
Also in this release: the response viewer's and clear-terminal's uncapped captures now carry the full-history deadline rather than the tail one; a `?full=1` capture that outruns its deadline falls back to the bounded tail instead of leaving a blank pane, a dead socket and a tab stuck reporting `aria-busy`; the output-gap marker is cleared at the repaint that settles it rather than in a `finally` that ran on failure too; and the replay-clear invariant is pinned in the gate.