JS/TS language service crashes & endless “Analyzing…” / formatter-hang due to Copilot-Chat watcher storm (vscode-chat-code-block paths)

[HeyrbiarKhan]

Type: Bug

1. Open my JavaScript monorepo (≈ 22 000 files, React + Webpack).

2. Keep GitHub ▪ Copilot Chat panel open and enabled.

3. Open any .js file.
   Hover a variable → status bar shows “Loading…” indefinitely.

4. Make changes to a file then press Ctrl + S → notification
   “Running ‘TypeScript and JavaScript Language Features’ Formatter” never finishes.

5. Send any prompt in Copilot Chat → blue ribbon
   “Analyzing ‘1#{"references":[]}’ and its dependencies” spins for minutes.

6. Within ~5 min a toast appears:
   The JS/TS language service crashed 5 times in the last 5 minutes …
   Possible culprit extensions: GitHub.copilot-chat, Postman.postman-for-vscode

7. IntelliSense & formatting stop until I reload the window. The loop then repeats.

Actual Results:

• Hover tooltip shows “Loading…” indefinitely.

• Save triggers banner “Running ‘TypeScript and JavaScript Language Features’ Formatter” that never finishes.

• Copilot Chat shows “Analyzing ‘1#{"references":[]}’ and its dependencies” for several minutes.

• After ~5 min a toast appears:
  “The JS/TS language service crashed 5 times in the last 5 minutes …”

• IntelliSense, hover, and formatting stop working until I reload the window.

• tsserver.log contains tens of thousands of identical
  createDirectoryWatcher lines pointing at ^/vscode-chat-code-block/… paths, followed by exit: tsserver.js.

Expected Results:

• Hover resolves within < 1 s.

• Format-on-save completes quickly (sub-second).

• Copilot Chat’s “Analyzing…” ribbon disappears promptly.

• JS/TS language service remains stable—no crashes or high CPU/RAM.

Log Evidence:

Info 11960 […] event:createDirectoryWatcher
    path:^/vscode-chat-code-block/6c5f030b…/response_48c8d77f…/0#{"references":[…]}
    WatchType: Failed Lookup Locations

Extension Bisect:
Disabling only GitHub.copilot-chat prevents the crash; every other extension (including classic Copilot) can remain enabled.
Re-enabling Copilot Chat immediately reproduced the crash.

Reproducible with Typescript 5.8.3

Screenshots:

Extension version: 0.28.2
VS Code version: Code 1.101.2 (2901c5ac6db8a986a5666c3af51ff804d05af0d4, 2025-06-24T20:27:15.391Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100
Modes:

Logs

Info: Logged in as HeyrbiarKhan
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Info: Got Copilot token for HeyrbiarKhan
Info: copilot token chat_enabled: true, sku: monthly_subscriber_quota
Debug: ConversationFeature: onDidAuthenticationChange has token: true
Debug: [context keys] Updating context keys.
Debug: [LanguageModelAccess] UPDATING language models
Info: BYOK: Copilot Chat known models list fetched successfully.
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Info: Fetched model metadata in 2604ms dfeea1f4-f66f-4830-ab50-9fe5cfd69213
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Debug: [LanguageModelAccess] DID UPDATE language models
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Trace: Resolving embedding model
Trace: Resolved embedding model
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: true, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: false, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: true, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: true, focused: true.
Trace: [GitServiceImpl][onDidOpenRepository] Active repository: {"_repo":{"rootUri":{"$mid":1,"external":"file:///c%3A/Users/Dell/emerson-web-v2","path":"/c:/Users/Dell/emerson-web-v2","scheme":"file"},"inputBox":{},"state":{},"ui":{}},"rootUri":{"$mid":1,"external":"file:///c%3A/Users/Dell/emerson-web-v2","path":"/c:/Users/Dell/emerson-web-v2","scheme":"file"},"headBranchName":"dev","headCommitHash":"3d658640a8dd11cfb21f0c2275dd474b02f9fda5","upstreamBranchName":"dev","upstreamRemote":"origin","isRebasing":true,"remotes":["origin"],"remoteFetchUrls":["https://github.com/keenthinking/emerson-web-v2.git"],"changes":{"mergeChanges":[],"indexChanges":[],"workingTree":[{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{}],"untrackedChanges":[]},"_onDidChangeSignal":{"_observers":{},"debugName":"Observable Signal From Event"},"headBranchNameObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"headCommitHashObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"upstreamBranchNameObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"upstreamRemoteObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"isRebasingObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"_checkIsIgnored":{"_waitingTimeMs":1000,"_queue":[],"_timeout":null},"_isIgnored":{"_map":{},"_map2":{}}}
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: true, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: false, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: false, focused: true.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: false, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: false, focused: true.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: false, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: false, focused: true.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: false, focused: false.
Trace: [GitServiceImpl][onDidOpenRepository] Active repository: {"_repo":{"rootUri":{"$mid":1,"external":"file:///c%3A/Users/Dell/emerson-web-v2","path":"/c:/Users/Dell/emerson-web-v2","scheme":"file"},"inputBox":{},"state":{},"ui":{}},"rootUri":{"$mid":1,"external":"file:///c%3A/Users/Dell/emerson-web-v2","path":"/c:/Users/Dell/emerson-web-v2","scheme":"file"},"headBranchName":"dev","headCommitHash":"3d658640a8dd11cfb21f0c2275dd474b02f9fda5","upstreamBranchName":"dev","upstreamRemote":"origin","isRebasing":true,"remotes":["origin"],"remoteFetchUrls":["https://github.com/keenthinking/emerson-web-v2.git"],"changes":{"mergeChanges":[],"indexChanges":[],"workingTree":[{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{}],"untrackedChanges":[]},"_onDidChangeSignal":{"_observers":{},"debugName":"Observable Signal From Event"},"headBranchNameObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"headCommitHashObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"upstreamBranchNameObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"upstreamRemoteObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"isRebasingObs":{"_observers":{},"_debugNameData":{},"_state":0,"_updateCount":0,"_dependencies":{},"_dependenciesToBeRemoved":{},"_isUpdating":false,"_isComputing":false,"_didReportChange":false,"_removedObserverToCallEndUpdateOn":null,"_isReaderValid":false},"_checkIsIgnored":{"_waitingTimeMs":1000,"_queue":[],"_timeout":null},"_isIgnored":{"_map":{},"_map2":{}}}
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: true, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: true, focused: true.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: true, focused: false.
Debug: [context keys] Window state change. Needs offline check: false, active: true, focused: true.

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1335U (12 x 2496)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: enabled_on direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_graphite: disabled_off video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	15.69GB (1.36GB free)
Process Argv	--crash-reporter-id c77c7b1e-ea25-4284-835c-135fd5a84205
Screen Reader	no
VM	80%

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[mjbvz]

Thanks or the detailed report

Do you see this when using typeScript 5.9+? We fixed a few bugs in 5.8 so I want to make sure the issue is still happening with the latest release

[HeyrbiarKhan]

Thanks for the reply. I retested with TypeScript 5.9.0-dev.20250702 and could no longer reproduce the issue.