Shell snapshot missing Homebrew PATH on macOS

Bug Report: Shell Snapshot Missing Homebrew PATH on macOS

Issue

The shell snapshot created by Claude Code on macOS is missing /opt/homebrew/bin from the PATH, even though it's configured in .zprofile which should be sourced for login shells.

Environment

• OS: macOS (Darwin 25.3.0)
• Shell: zsh
• Claude Code: Running via VSCode extension
• Homebrew location: /opt/homebrew/bin

Expected Behavior

When the Bash tool is invoked with a login shell (-l flag), it should source .zprofile which contains:

eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

This should add /opt/homebrew/bin to the PATH before the snapshot is created.

Actual Behavior

Shell snapshot at /Users/ericwagoner/.claude/shell-snapshots/snapshot-zsh-*.sh contains:

export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin

Homebrew paths are missing, causing npm, node, and other Homebrew-installed tools to be unavailable.

Shell Invocation

Commands are run as:

/bin/zsh -c -l source /Users/ericwagoner/.claude/shell-snapshots/snapshot-zsh-*.sh && ...

Impact

• Git pre-commit and pre-push hooks fail because they can't find npx
• All npm commands fail
• Requires workaround of prefixing every command with source ~/.zshrc

Workaround

Added Homebrew initialization to .zshenv (which is sourced before .zprofile):

eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

Root Cause

The shell snapshot appears to be captured before .zprofile executes, or the snapshot mechanism doesn't properly capture environment changes from eval commands.

Related

This worked correctly in previous sessions, suggesting either:

1. Recent change in snapshot timing
2. Change in how environment is captured
3. Race condition in initialization order