# Windows Troubleshooting

**Windows users:** If plan-phase freezes during agent spawning (common on Windows due to
stdio deadlocks with MCP servers — see Claude Code issue anthropics/claude-code#28126):

1. **Force-kill:** Close the terminal (Ctrl+C may not work)
2. **Clean up orphaned processes:**
   ```powershell
   # Kill orphaned node processes from stale MCP servers
   Get-Process node -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where-Object {$_.StartTime -lt (Get-Date).AddHours(-1)} | Stop-Process -Force
   ```
3. **Clean up stale task directories:**
   ```powershell
   # Remove stale subagent task dirs (Claude Code never cleans these on crash)
   Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\tasks\*" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
   ```
4. **Reduce MCP server count:** Temporarily disable non-essential MCP servers in settings.json
5. **Retry:** Restart Claude Code and run `/gsd:plan-phase` again

If freezes persist, try `--skip-research` to reduce the agent chain from 3 to 2 agents:
```
/gsd:plan-phase N --skip-research
```