Fix Claude binary path corruption from shell integration escape sequences

[brndnsvr]

Problem

Clui CC silently fails to spawn Claude CLI subprocesses when the user has terminal shell integration enabled (iTerm2, VS Code terminal, Ghostty, etc.) and/or has Claude CLI installed at ~/.local/bin/claude.

The app launches, the UI renders, but prompts never produce responses. There are no user-visible error messages — the debug log reveals the issue:

Claude binary: ]1337;RemoteHost=user@host]1337;CurrentDir=/path]1337;ShellIntegrationVersion=14;shell=zsh/Users/user/.local/bin/claude

The resolved binary path is contaminated with OSC escape sequences, so spawn() fails silently.

Root Cause

The binary discovery fallback in run-manager.ts, pty-run-manager.ts, and process-manager.ts uses an interactive shell (-i flag):

execSync('/bin/zsh -ilc "whence -p claude"', ...)

Interactive shells source .zshrc, which loads shell integrations that emit escape sequences to stdout. These get concatenated with the actual binary path, producing a garbage string.

The same issue affects cli-env.ts PATH construction (/bin/zsh -ilc "echo $PATH") and whisper binary lookup in index.ts.

Who This Affects

This hits anyone with either or both of:

1. A terminal emulator with shell integration — these inject OSC escape sequences into shell stdout, contaminating any path resolved via execSync with a login shell:

   • iTerm2 (shell integration enabled by default)
   • VS Code integrated terminal
   • Ghostty
   • Warp, Kitty, WezTerm

2. Claude CLI installed at ~/.local/bin/claude — common with newer Node/npm setups. This path wasn't in the hardcoded candidates list, forcing the shell fallback path where contamination occurs.

Terminal.app and Alacritty are not affected — they don't inject shell integration sequences.

Changes

cli-env.ts:

• Add ~/.local/bin to the hardcoded PATH entries
• Drop -i (interactive) flag from shell fallback commands
• Add stripShellEscapes() helper to clean residual escape sequences from shell output
• Add extractAbsoluteShellPath() — shared helper that strips escapes and validates the result is an absolute path

run-manager.ts, pty-run-manager.ts, process-manager.ts:

• Add ~/.local/bin/claude to the candidates list (checked first via direct test -x)
• Drop -i flag, add timeout: 3000 to shell fallbacks
• Use shared extractAbsoluteShellPath() instead of inline .trim()

index.ts:

• Fix whisper binary lookup (same escape contamination issue)
• Add env: getCliEnv() and timeout: 3000 to whisper shell commands

Test plan

• Verified on macOS 26.4 with iTerm2 shell integration and Claude CLI at ~/.local/bin/claude
• npm run build passes cleanly
• Debug log shows clean binary path after fix
• App successfully spawns Claude subprocesses and responds to prompts

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Fixes a macOS-specific subprocess discovery failure where execSync output from login shells can be polluted by terminal shell-integration OSC/ANSI escape sequences, causing invalid binary paths (notably for Claude CLI and whisper) and silent spawn failures.

Changes:

• Adds ~/.local/bin (and ~/.local/bin/claude) to binary/path discovery to cover common modern installs.
• Switches shell fallbacks from interactive login shells to non-interactive login shells and adds timeouts to avoid hangs.
• Introduces shared sanitization/parsing helpers (stripShellEscapes, extractAbsoluteShellPath) to clean shell output before using it as a path.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/main/cli-env.ts	Builds a more robust CLI PATH and adds helpers to strip escape sequences and safely extract absolute paths from shell output.
src/main/process-manager.ts	Updates Claude binary discovery to prefer ~/.local/bin/claude, removes interactive shell usage, and sanitizes shell-resolved paths.
src/main/index.ts	Fixes whisper binary lookup by using getCliEnv(), adding timeouts, and sanitizing shell output before treating it as a path.
src/main/claude/run-manager.ts	Aligns Claude binary discovery with non-interactive login shells, timeouts, and sanitized path extraction.
src/main/claude/pty-run-manager.ts	Same Claude binary discovery hardening for the PTY transport path.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

src/main/process-manager.ts:45

• The NVM candidate join(homedir(), '.nvm/versions/node', '**', 'bin/claude') is effectively dead: it’s used with test -x "${c}", but ** won’t expand because it’s quoted (and /bin/sh doesn’t support globstar by default). Either replace this with an explicit directory scan (iterate ~/.nvm/versions/node/*/bin/claude via fs) or drop the candidate and rely on the shell fallback.

      join(homedir(), '.npm-global/bin/claude'),
      join(homedir(), '.nvm/versions/node', '**', 'bin/claude'),

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[mite404]

I was wondering why my recent commands were printing garbage. thx!