Terminal rendering enters infinite refresh loop when conversation history is long

[neonid0]

Describe the bug

When a session accumulates a large number of messages, the CLI's TUI enters an infinite re-render loop, causing the terminal to flicker/refresh continuously and become unusable. The only recovery is to kill the process.

Affected version

GitHub Copilot CLI 0.0.423.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Start copilot in any directory
2. Send many messages back and forth until the conversation history is long
3. Observe the terminal begins rapidly refreshing/flickering and never stops

Expected behavior

The CLI renders normally regardless of conversation length.

Additional context

Environment:

• Reproducible on: kitty + zsh (Linux), Alacritty + zsh (macOS)
• Trigger: Long conversation with many back-and-forth messages
• Can check configuration on https://github.com/neonid0/.dotfiles

Actual behavior: Terminal enters an infinite refresh/redraw loop and becomes unresponsive.

Workaround: /compact to reduce message history before the loop starts, or Ctrl+C to kill the process.

[ViktorBergman]

Same issue occurs on Windows Terminal too.

[ori-nonni]

This is particularly bad with gemini or gpt codex, which have a lot of thinking output, triggering the bug sooner

[devm33]

Hello, we have now shipped a new rendering approach that fixes flickering and flashing. Please update to the latest version and try it out!

[ori-nonni]

Hello, we have now shipped a new rendering approach that fixes flickering and flashing. Please update to the latest version and try it out!

Here is the release referenced, which sets the alt screen as default: https://github.com/github/copilot-cli/releases/tag/v1.0.12
Also to add to this! I'm currently running 1.0.2. The --alt-screen flag fixes the issue (you can also set this setting in config). It would
have been helpful to know this sooner.