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Windows: background process spawns flash visible console windows over the UI #2490

Description

@adamentwistle

Description

On Windows, the desktop app continuously flashes black console windows over the
UI during normal use. Every std::process::Command spawn of a console-subsystem
binary (git, node, ffmpeg, agent CLIs) opens a visible console window unless the
CREATE_NO_WINDOW process-creation flag is set, and none of the background
spawn sites in desktop/src-tauri set it.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Build and run the desktop app on Windows (v0.4.23, source build).
  2. Open a workspace with a project/repo attached and at least one agent runtime
    installed (e.g. Claude Code or Codex).
  3. Watch the screen during idle/normal use.

Expected: no visible console windows.

Actual: console windows flash repeatedly — on git operations, agent runtime
discovery/version probes, auth status probes, and media transcodes. On an
otherwise idle workspace this happens every few seconds (readiness polling).

Affected spawn sites

All background (non-interactive) spawns under desktop/src-tauri/src:

  • commands/project_git_exec.rs — run_git (every git invocation)
  • commands/agent_discovery/managed_node.rs — managed node --version probe
  • commands/agent_model_process.rs — agent models listing
  • commands/agent_auth.rs — ACP auth command + Claude subscription login
  • commands/media_transcode.rs — ffmpeg command builder (+ test fixture generation)
  • commands/relay_reconnect.rs — run_with_timeout
  • managed_agents/backend.rs — invoke_provider
  • managed_agents/discovery.rs — login-shell probe, auth status probe, codex ACP version probe
  • managed_agents/agent_env.rs — env probe tests

Proposed fix

Set creation_flags(CREATE_NO_WINDOW) (0x0800_0000) on these commands,
guarded by #[cfg(windows)] via std::os::windows::process::CommandExt — no
new dependencies, no behavior change on other platforms. Interactive/foreground
spawns are left untouched.

I run this patch locally (9 files, ~116 insertions) and can open a PR —
branch is ready.

Environment

  • Windows 11 Pro 25H2 (build 26200)
  • Buzz desktop v0.4.23, built from source (MSVC, Rust 1.95.0)

Activity

  1. xtan9 commented on Jul 23, 2026

    @xtan9

    Independent confirmation from the packaged Windows desktop app: clicking several Buzz UI surfaces causes multiple Windows Terminal windows to flash and disappear. The installed release files were updated on July 22, 2026 (current v0.4.23 release window).

    Inspecting the installed binaries shows buzz-desktop.exe uses the GUI PE subsystem, while buzz-acp.exe, buzz-agent.exe, buzz-dev-mcp.exe, buzz.exe, and git-credential-nostr.exe use the console subsystem. The behavior is therefore consistent with the background spawn sites listed above omitting CREATE_NO_WINDOW.

    This is frequent enough to be disruptive during normal navigation, even though the helper windows close quickly.

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