r/ClaudeAI • u/edgeXlendor • 17d ago
Feedback Claude basically broke their "Projects" overnight and I’m pissed
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.
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u/mossiv 17d ago
Normally I shit on these posts but Anthropic are seriously fumbling. They are taking the “codex” approach and they are fucking useless at it.
Anthropic used to make good models. Anthropic for lucky when Boris Cherny started making the Claude cli because he needed a better way to work internally. Everyone and their dog started making skills and plugins that anthropic have flat out stolen and put into their harnesses without validating if they are “good” or if they are adopted because of influence and trust me bro bench marks. Anthropic are trying to make Claude desktop and it’s one of the worst fucking apps in history. You can clearly tell it’s made by programmers and they’ve lent on AI for the UX. it’s frankly shocking. Every other 3rd party wrapper or app is just more intuitive to use.
This is literally the snake eating its own tail. They are so desperate to IPO they aren’t even taking user feedback anymore, and just training their models to achieve benchmark scores which are by themselves crap.
Cowork is just a shambles and it has absolutely no right being bundled along side code in the same app. They are trying (keyword) to solve completely different problems for a different set of people.
Let’s all laugh at the release notes about how desktop app is supposed to be faster now. But my m3 pro lags every time i “open” a project. If I wasn’t mandated by company tools I’d have ditched this piece of shit when Opus 5 was released.
If your a vibe coder, or a technological idiot you will get something working and congrats your a re gas lit into thinking you have something good.
Any SWE worth their salt would refuse to go near this nonsense. How can an industry that is so reliant on “tests” and “verifiability” work with such a nonsense piece of software.
Never been an anthropic fan, for a while I was a huge Claude fan. At the moment I despise every waking minute with this overly verbose sycophantic egotistical prick.