tl;dr Use Claude Code in WSL inside Windows Terminal? Copying an image in Windows and pressing Ctrl+V in Claude Code doesn't work. Three things break: (1) WSL only hands Windows images to the Linux side in an old BMP format Claude Code can't read; (2) WSL also keeps quietly overwriting your fixes a moment later; (3) Windows Terminal grabs Ctrl+V before Claude Code can see it. The fix is a small Windows program that converts the image to PNG, a Linux script that puts it on the Linux clipboard (and re-asserts once after WSL overwrites it), and one extra keybinding for Claude Code so the keystroke actually reaches the program.
Ctrl+V paste works for me on WSL. My secret is that I have given up on WSLg and use a standalone X Windows server. Specifically, the X410 X Server. This removes a whole lot of weird behavior including the ones described by the article.
Unrelated but I have a similar problem with speech to text apps on windows, where due to the funkiness of claude codes (necessary) implementation, it doesn't send the keybindings correctly.
Why are we emotionally tied to command line interfaces
Desktop apps are a second class citizen that do not get feature parity
Lot of actions on Claude Code seem much more suited for a thoughtfully designed GUI
Even the chat responses and links therein can benefit from judicious use of rich text and formatting and real hyperlinks to other parts of the UI or elsewhere
Favourite Skills can be toolbar buttons or menus if user so wishes.
The reason for the CLI is because most editors will support CLIs natively, so its very easy to pop in Claude Code either via your IDE or your preferred terminal in your project directory. It's lowkey the most genius design choice by Anthropic. Why they havent made a real GUI since? No idea.
This is still better than trying to paste text, files or images in Linux. In latest Pop!_OS I have to keep the app I copy from open until I paste. To add insult to the injury, pasting in terminal produces weird characters.
Only tangentially related, but does anyone know if it is possible to ‘paste’ images to an agent harness running inside a docker container?
My current workaround is to paste it inside the working directory on the host machine, then @ reference it, but would be nice to streamline that workflow.
My main issue was the ability to paste images when using ClaudeCode via ssh on a remote machine, so I solved it by having Claude write a quick bridge that fetches the image in your clipboard, rsync it to the server and paste the correct image path in your clipboard: https://github.com/mdrzn/claude-screenshot-uploader
Why would anyone assume that pasting an image into a CLI interface would work? The fact that this is framed as a bug is wild to me (but very cool that there is a way to do it now)
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 42.0 ms ] threadCode: https://github.com/rajveerb/wsl-clip-bridge
I sure wish it didn't have to be a console app
Desktop apps are a second class citizen that do not get feature parity
Lot of actions on Claude Code seem much more suited for a thoughtfully designed GUI
Even the chat responses and links therein can benefit from judicious use of rich text and formatting and real hyperlinks to other parts of the UI or elsewhere
Favourite Skills can be toolbar buttons or menus if user so wishes.
My current workaround is to paste it inside the working directory on the host machine, then @ reference it, but would be nice to streamline that workflow.