Cowork: artifact deletion from UI leaves orphaned folder on disk

Resolved 💬 1 comment Opened May 7, 2026 by LeeKevin Closed Jun 5, 2026

Summary

When deleting an artifact from the Cowork UI, the entry is removed from artifacts.json but the corresponding folder in ~/Documents/Claude/Artifacts/ is not cleaned up. This causes create_artifact to fail with:

A folder for "lp-dashboard" already exists in Documents/Claude/Artifacts. It may be from a previous deletion or another account. Choose a different id.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Create an artifact in Cowork (e.g., id lp-dashboard)
  2. Delete it from the Cowork UI
  3. Verify the entry is gone from artifacts.json
  4. Verify ~/Documents/Claude/Artifacts/lp-dashboard/ still exists on disk
  5. Try to create a new artifact with the same id → error

Expected behavior

Deleting an artifact from the UI should also remove the folder from ~/Documents/Claude/Artifacts/.

Actual behavior

  • artifacts.json entry is removed ✅
  • ~/Documents/Claude/Artifacts/<id>/ folder persists ❌
  • Re-creating an artifact with the same id fails ❌

Environment

  • macOS (Darwin 24.6.0)
  • Claude Desktop with Cowork mode
  • Session storage: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/local-agent-mode-sessions/
  • Artifact storage: ~/Documents/Claude/Artifacts/

Additional context

In one session, 11 artifacts were tracked in artifacts.json while 14 folders existed on disk — the 3 extra were orphans from prior UI deletions.

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