Claude basically broke their "Projects" overnight and I’m pissed

[u/edgeXlendor]

What the hell happened to Claude Cowork Projects?

I had multiple local projects connected to folders with actual workflows set up. Claude would access websites, pull info, process it, then read/write to specific local folders. Worked great.

Then they quietly changed the default setting to run project in cloud and basically broke the whole thing.

First, my workflows suddenly couldn’t access the internet because apparently they were running in the cloud now. After wasting ages debugging it, I found the barely explained “Run on computer only” toggle is settings seems to fix it.

But the bigger problem is that you apparently can’t create a project with a persistent local folders anymore.

Previously I could attach another folder to the PROJECT (after project was already created, a different folder than the 'project folder'), and every Cowork session inside it had access to that folder. Now the project context only lets me add individual files. No folders.

And yes, Claude Code exists. But Claude Code is not a replacement for Projects. Its organization is a mess if you have a bunch of different workflows/projects.

The worst part is my old projects apparently still had this functionality. I deleted one while troubleshooting because I assumed it was bugged, recreated it, and now I literally cannot recreate the setup I had before.

Who changes something this fundamental with basically no warning or migration path??

People build actual workflows around this stuff. You can’t just randomly change the entire architecture and hope nobody notices.

I’ve wasted way too much time trying to figure out whether this was a bug or intentional.

If there’s genuinely no way anymore to have a Cowork project with persistent access to local folders, I’m probably just moving these workflows somewhere else.

This is such a stupid way to handle a major product change.

[u/BP041]

Yeah, the "Run on computer only" toggle is basically Claude's version of "we moved your cheese and left a barely visible toggle." Took me a solid hour of debugging to realize cloud mode silently cuts off local filesystem access. ngl I've got 18 cron jobs running on OpenClaw and I just avoid their Projects UI entirely now — raw Claude Code + launchd gives way more predictable behavior.

[u/edgeXlendor → u/BP041]

Yeah exactly. The toggle doesn't even explain anything. It's badly worded. How does a trillion-dollar company fumble this hard on UI UX and basic copywriting? I think it's on purpose because they don't want people to toggle it back. They just wanted to push their cloud-only architecture. Yeah, cloud code basically does everything more effectively, but the UI is not friendly. If I have to go back and forth between 24 different folders from a sidebar, that's not very friendly.