claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix Bold markdown in wrapped table cells: first character of bold text rendered as garbled glyph (VS Code terminal)

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.143
• OS: macOS (Darwin 25.0.0)
• Terminal: VS Code integrated terminal (TERM_PROGRAM=vscode, TERM=xterm-256color)

What happened

When Claude Code renders a markdown table that wraps to a narrow width, it falls back to a column-by-column listing format like:

Column 1: Stakes para
Before: (none)
After:  "This is why teams 'ship faster'..."

The **Before:** / **After:** bold markdown in the source has its first character corrupted in the output — Before: renders as [garbled-glyph]efore:, After: renders as [garbled-glyph]fter:, Image renders as [garbled-glyph]mage. Only the first character of bolded text at the start of a line is affected. The rest of the line renders fine.

Because the corrupted characters look like typos to the editor, the terminal's spellcheck then underlines efore, fter, mage with dotted red lines, compounding the visual mess.

Repro

Have Claude Code render a markdown table with bold cell headers that's wide enough to force the wrapped column-by-column fallback layout. Example markdown that triggered it for me:

| | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| **Stakes para** | (none) | "This is why teams ship faster but stakeholders feel nothing changed." |
| **Playbook CTA** | "Soft launch 9 June, public launch 16 June" | "Available now on Gumroad" |
| **Image** | DAYS / DAYS / WEEKS | DAYS / WEEKS / EVEN LONGER |

Expected

**Before:** should render bold with all characters intact: Before: (in bold).

Actual

First character of every bold token at line-start is replaced with an unprintable/box glyph. See screenshot (have a local copy I can drag into this issue via the browser).

Hypothesis

Smells like the ANSI bold-start escape sequence consuming one byte of the following text, or a font fallback that doesn't have a bold cut for capital letters at a certain position. Only affects the first character, which is what makes me suspect escape-sequence handling rather than a pure font issue.

Workaround

None found yet — affects any bolded label rendered at line-start in the wrapped table format. Switching to a plain (non-bold) label avoids it.