[BUG] RPC Error in claude co-work

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?

Environment

• Date/time: 2026-04-16 09:19:03 CEST
• macOS: 26.4.1 (25E253)
• Arch: arm64
• Claude Code: 2.1.92 (Claude Code)

Error

RPC error: ensure user: useradd failed: exit status 12: useradd: cannot create directory /sessions/elegant-eloquent-gauss

• Session slug: elegant-eloquent-gauss

Recent Claude Code logs

total 9320
-rw-r--r-- 1 davehamelink staff 1264 16 apr. 08:00 launchd-session.err
-rw-r--r-- 1 davehamelink staff 345 16 apr. 07:01 launchd-stop.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 davehamelink staff 644 15 apr. 22:03 launchd-nightmode.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 davehamelink staff 4751775 11 apr. 12:21 claude-bot-launchd.err.log

What Should Happen?

Claude co-work should execute my command, it is only returning this error: RPC error: ensure user: useradd failed: exit status 12: useradd: cannot create directory /sessions/elegant-eloquent-gauss

Error Messages/Logs

RPC error: ensure user: useradd failed: exit status 12: useradd: cannot create directory /sessions/elegant-eloquent-gauss

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Claude CoWork (where I have a daily Outlook ↔ Notion sync configured).
2. Trigger any task — either:

a. The scheduled daily Outlook/Notion sync runs on its own, OR
b. I manually start a brand-new task (any prompt, any kind).

1. CoWork attempts to provision a session container.
2. Provisioning fails with:

"RPC error: ensure user: useradd failed: exit status 12:
useradd: cannot create directory /sessions/<session-slug>"
(example slug observed: elegant-eloquent-gauss)

Expected: Session provisions and the task runs.
Actual: Every task — scheduled or new — fails at provisioning with the
useradd error. No tasks have completed since the failure started.

Reproducibility: 100% — every CoWork task fails this way right now.

Scope:

• Affects all tasks, not a specific one (existing scheduled sync AND

brand-new ad-hoc tasks both fail).

• Each failed run produces a different /sessions/<slug> path, so it's

not a stuck/stale slug — the provisioner is failing to mkdir under
/sessions for every fresh user it tries to create.

• Local environment unchanged; nothing I can do client-side fixes it.

Cannot provide a minimal local repro — the failure is in CoWork's
hosted session provisioner (useradd is running on Anthropic's
infrastructure, not mine).

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

• Claude Code: 2.1.92 (Claude Code)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

iTerm2

Additional Information

_No response_