Cowork Cloud: persistent useradd failed exit status 12 — cannot create sessions for days

Status Fixed / completed

Reported on v2.1.92

Maintainer reply None cached

Activity 4 comments · opened Apr 12, 2026 · closed Apr 12, 2026

Environment

Claude Code version: 2.1.92
Platform: macOS (Darwin 25.4.0, ARM64)
Plan: Max (Pro)
Entrypoint: Claude Desktop
Account: id@avortech.com

Problem

Cowork Cloud scheduled tasks have been completely non-functional for several days (since approximately April 9-10, 2026).

Error

RPC error: ensure user: useradd failed: exit status 12: useradd: cannot create directory /sessions/happy-friendly-clarke

Impact

All 28 previously created scheduled tasks have disappeared — list_scheduled_tasks returns empty
Cannot create new scheduled tasks — same RPC error on any attempt
Local Cowork sessions also affected — the error now occurs when trying to run any Cowork operation that requires a cloud session

What I've tried

Waiting several days — the issue persists and has not self-resolved
Retrying at different times of day — same error consistently
The error is 100% reproducible on every attempt

Expected behavior

Cowork Cloud should be able to create session directories and execute scheduled tasks normally.

Analysis

Exit code 12 from useradd means "cannot create home directory." This suggests a server-side disk space or filesystem issue on the node(s) assigned to my account. The session name format (happy-friendly-clarke) indicates randomized container/sandbox allocation that consistently fails at the directory creation step.

Severity

Critical blocker — I rely on Cowork Cloud for 28 automated business tasks (CRM monitoring, email triage, daily reports, data backups) that have all been down for multiple days with no workaround available.

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

id-collab · 6 months ago

Additional issue: Cowork/Dispatch unavailable on corporate (Team) accounts

I should also highlight a significant usability problem beyond the server error:

Cowork Cloud / Dispatch functionality is only available on my personal Max plan, not on my corporate Team account (id@avortech.com). This means:

My business relies on Cowork scheduled tasks for daily operations (CRM, email monitoring, reporting)
But I can only set up and manage these tasks from my personal account, not the corporate one
When the personal Max account hits issues (like the current useradd error), there's no fallback — all business automation goes down
Team/corporate accounts should have Cowork/Dispatch access, ideally with shared visibility across the team

Request: Please make Cowork Cloud and Dispatch available for Team/corporate plans. It's a critical business tool, and restricting it to personal Max accounts creates a fragile single point of failure for organizations that depend on it.

github-actions[bot] · 6 months ago

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