Hello everyone, I’m new here and have been lurking while setting up my development environment. I’ve run into a persistent and quite disruptive issue that I’ve been documenting for the past week, and I’d really appreciate some guidance before I start disabling or switching core plugins.
I’m using VSCode on macOS Sonoma (14.5) on an M2 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM. The core problem is that my editor becomes completely unresponsive—spinning beach ball, requires a force quit—specifically when I am working with API calls. This happens consistently when I have both the OpenClaw (v2.1.7) and Thunder Client (v2.14.2) extensions enabled.
Here is my detailed process and the exact scenario that triggers the freeze:
* I have OpenClaw configured for API schema ingestion from our internal repositories. It’s set to generate client code in TypeScript.
* When I open a `.http` or `.rest` file to use Thunder Client to test an endpoint, the moment I send a request (or sometimes even on saving the file), VSCode freezes entirely.
* The freeze lasts for over a minute, sometimes longer, and CPU activity for the “Code Helper (Renderer)” process spikes to over 140%.
* If I disable either one of the plugins, the problem disappears. Thunder Client works fine with other plugins, and OpenClaw’s code generation works fine on its own.
My current working theory is that there’s a conflict in how both extensions might be trying to parse or interact with the API definition files simultaneously. Perhaps a memory leak or a thread lock on the language server?
To help troubleshoot, here are the other major extensions I have running, in case there’s a known interaction:
* Prettier
* ESLint
* GitHub Copilot
* Docker
* Python
* REST Client (the alternative to Thunder Client, which I’ve tried and does *not* cause the freeze with OpenClaw)
My main questions for the community are:
* Has anyone else encountered a specific conflict between OpenClaw and Thunder Client, or similar API tooling extensions?
* Are there specific settings in either extension (like disabling automatic schema parsing on file save, or limiting Thunder Client’s connection pool) that I should adjust as a first step?
* From a total cost of ownership standpoint, I’d prefer not to abandon either tool—OpenClaw is integrated into our workflow, and my team prefers Thunder Client’s UI. What would be a systematic evaluation path?
* What should I be looking for in the developer logs or console to pinpoint the exact conflict? I’ve checked the Output panels but am unsure which logs are most relevant for extension conflicts.
I’m eager to perform any diagnostic steps or provide more system information. I just want to understand the root cause thoroughly before I commit to a solution, like switching to a different REST client or building a custom OpenClaw configuration.