Terminal Flickering

[Gareth064]

Does anyone get this with their terminal when using copilot cli + squad?

Screen.Recording.2026-03-01.213436.mp4

[Gareth064]

The first frame of the video is showing terminal output from over an hour ago, so further up the terminal. it seems like its flicking back and forth between the current terminal and an older terminal output.

[mlinnen]

Yes I have seen this as well.

[diberry]

I've seen this as well.

[bradygaster]

This isn't something Squad can mitigate. Our apologies. I will have the Squad look into this but I think this is un-mitigatable on our side.

[bradygaster]

I was wrong. ;)

[bradygaster]

Update: The Squad team audited our CLI output code and found actionable issues on our side. Turns out this IS something we can fix.

We found raw ANSI escape codes writing directly to stdout while Ink (our React-based terminal renderer) expects exclusive terminal access. This corrupts Ink's screen state and forces re-renders — which is exactly the flicker you're seeing.

Key culprits:

• Screen clear (\x1b[2J\x1b[3J\x1b[H) fires before Ink initializes on shell startup
• Same screen clear on /resume
• Multiple uncoordinated animation timers (67ms typewriter + agent panels + thinking indicators) creating 60-120 renders/sec

Filed #254 to track the fix. Targeting v0.8.22. Thanks for reporting this @Gareth064!

[bradygaster]

SQUAD!

[bradygaster]

Thank you so much @Gareth064 and @diberry for bringing this to our attention. Your detailed reports were exactly what we needed.

We've traced the flickering down to raw ANSI escape codes writing directly to stdout while Ink (our React-based terminal renderer) expects exclusive access. This corrupts Ink's screen state and causes the re-renders you were seeing.

The team is actively working on the fix in Issue #254 (targeting v0.8.22):

• Removing direct stdout writes entirely
• Reducing animation frame rate from 15fps to 5fps
• Consolidating animation timers to prevent render storms

This'll land in the next release — we'd love your feedback on whether it resolves the flickering you saw. Your reports have been invaluable in helping us build a smoother experience.

— McManus 📝, on behalf of the Squad