[BUG] Dispatch cross-device session isolation and notification routing

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Bug Report: Dispatch cross-device session isolation and notification routing

Summary

Three related issues with Dispatch cross-device behavior observed during a single Cowork session on Mac (Max plan, macOS Sequoia 15.5, MacBook Air M4):

1. Dispatch-initiated sessions don't appear in Recents sidebar. A task dispatched from iPhone completed successfully (wrote files to the shared filesystem), and its output is visible in the Dispatch main panel on the Mac, but the session has no entry in the Recents sidebar. The only way to know the task ran is to check the Dispatch panel or notice new files on disk.

1. Permission prompts routed to wrong device. During an active Cowork session on the Mac (working in Dispatch for hours), permission prompts triggered by file operations were silently routed to the iPad's Dispatch instead of surfacing in the active session on the Mac. No indication appeared on the Mac that the session was waiting on approval. The session appeared frozen. This happened three times in a row before the user checked the iPad.

1. Reported stuck notification loop. A Dispatch session from iPhone reported that it had fired the same completion notification dozens of times to the iPhone during the session. The user did not have the iPhone on to observe the notifications directly, and no evidence of the problem was visible on the Mac's Dispatch panel (though notifications may have cleared by the time the user checked). The report came from the Dispatch session itself.

Environment

• Plan: Max
• Mac: MacBook Air M4, macOS Sequoia 15.5
• iPad: 10th Gen
• iPhone: iPhone 16 Pro
• All devices on same iCloud account
• Related: anthropics/claude-code#37713 (Dispatch sessions isolated from Projects)

What Should Happen?

Expected behavior

• Dispatch-initiated sessions should appear in the Recents sidebar on the Mac (perhaps with a "Dispatch" prefix, as some sessions already do)
• Permission prompts triggered by an active session should surface in that session, on the device where the session is active
• Completion notifications should fire once

• Issue 1 makes it easy to lose track of work done via Dispatch
• Issue 2 caused context loss: the apparent "freeze" led to user interruptions, which triggered context compaction, which lost session context. Two interruptions cost enough context to trigger compaction during substantive work.
• Issue 3 was reported by the session, not directly observed; severity unclear

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

Steps to reproduce

Issue 1 (Session not in Recents):

1. Open Cowork on Mac, navigate to Dispatch
2. On iPhone, open Claude app and dispatch a task to Cowork (e.g., "Create a new SOP file at ~/ClaudeCowork/Claude/Procedures/")
3. Wait for the task to complete
4. On Mac, check the Recents sidebar — the iPhone-dispatched session does not appear
5. The Dispatch main panel does show the session output
6. The files written by the session are present on disk

Issue 2 (Permission prompts to wrong device):

1. Open Cowork on Mac, work in an active session initially started on iOS or PadOS (prepended with Dispatch in Recents) for an extended period
2. Initiate file operations that trigger permission prompts (e.g., writing to multiple files)
3. Permission prompts appear on iPad's Dispatch instead of in the active Mac session
4. Mac session appears frozen (no progress for 25 minutes) with no indication it's waiting on approval

Issue 3 (Reported stuck notifications):

1. Dispatch a task from iPhone
2. Task completes
3. The session itself reports that completion notification fired dozens of times to the iPhone
4. User did not directly observe the notifications (iPhone was not being monitored)
5. No evidence of the issue on the Mac's Dispatch panel (may have cleared before checking)

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

Didn't check, but builds updated on 3/29, 3/30, and 3/31 (updated each day)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

<img width="1650" height="1005" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/49b94224-cbdc-4676-9073-340c65d1d386" />
<img width="1650" height="1005" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e5614a6b-1f52-4eec-add3-26afbce3e885" />

One shows Dispatch main panel but session isn't in Recents in the lower left sidebar

The other shows what appeared to be "frozen" on the Mac for 25 minutes, I not knowing the session had sent a permissions request (to write a file) to my iPad or iPhone. Once I approved on the iPad, the file wrote and the other tasks completed quickly