Kernel panic: 3 Claude processes hit 17.3 GB resident on 18 GB machine, MacBook powered off (v2.1.37)

[Piesson]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

This is my third report in 4 days. Each time worse. This time Claude Code caused a kernel panic — my MacBook physically shut down.

• Memory spike: 3 processes peaked at 12.7 GB combined on 18 GB machine (v2.1.34, macOS native) #24113 (Feb 8): 12.7 GB, swap 96%, still usable
• Single Claude process consumed 36 GB on 18 GB machine, triggering Jetsam OOM kill (v2.1.37) #24583 (Feb 10): 36 GB single process, Jetsam kill, hard reboot
• Today (Feb 11): Kernel panic. Forced power-off. Fan noise audible before crash.

I was doing normal single-user work. Within ~15 minutes the system froze and died.

The Numbers

From the kernel panic log (panic-full-2026-02-11-195623.0002.panic):

PID	Resident Memory
90079	7,095 MB
67596	5,442 MB
90331	4,721 MB
5 others	~1,386 MB combined
Total (8 processes)	18,643 MB

18.2 GB resident on 18 GB RAM. System had 47 MB free. Watchdog couldn't check in for 93 seconds → kernel panic.

panic(cpu 6 caller 0xfffffe0051cee31c): watchdog timeout: no checkins
from watchdogd in 93 seconds

Why is this still happening?

This memory leak pattern has been reported since v2.1.34. I've provided Jetsam logs, footprint data, and now a full kernel panic dump. Other users report the same (#24644, #23442, #4953). The native macOS app is bricking machines.

Is there a timeline for a fix? Is there anything else I can provide to help debug this?

Environment

• Claude Code: 2.1.37 (native macOS)
• macOS: 26.1 (25B78), Apple M3 Pro, 18 GB
• Terminal: Ghostty

Diagnostic Files

All in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ — happy to upload:

• panic-full-2026-02-11-195623.0002.panic
• ResetCounter-2026-02-11-195626.diag

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. Single Claude process consumed 36 GB on 18 GB machine, triggering Jetsam OOM kill (v2.1.37) #24583
2. Memory spike: 3 processes peaked at 12.7 GB combined on 18 GB machine (v2.1.34, macOS native) #24113
3. Memory leak: CLI process grows to 44GB+ RAM with GC thrashing and unresponsive SIGTERM #24644

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

• If your issue is a duplicate, please close it and 👍 the existing issue instead
• To prevent auto-closure, add a comment or 👎 this comment

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[Piesson]

Should I just go back to nom version? :(

[Piesson]

Update: Root cause identified — this is a Ghostty terminal bug, not Claude Code

After further investigation, the memory consumption I reported was caused by a memory leak in Ghostty (my terminal emulator), not Claude Code itself.

Root cause: Ghostty has a bug in scrollback pruning where non-standard pages are resized to standard size, causing munmap to never be called. Claude Code's output (heavy multi-codepoint grapheme sequences) triggers this leak at scale.

References:

• ghostty-org/ghostty#10289 — Same symptoms (71 GB on 16 GB machine)
• Mitchell Hashimoto's detailed write-up
• Fix PR #10251

Status: Fixed on Ghostty's main branch. Will ship in Ghostty 1.3.0 (expected March 2026). Workaround: scrollback-limit = 2500 in Ghostty config.

Apologies for the noise — closing this issue.

[Piesson]

Closing — root cause is Ghostty memory leak, not Claude Code.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.