[FEATURE] Cowork: make the project 'Edit instructions' dialog larger / resizable (current textarea is too small for real instructions)

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Desktop / Cowork

Problem Statement

The "Edit instructions" dialog for a Cowork project opens as a small modal with a small, fixed-size textarea. Longer instructions do not fit: the text is squeezed into a short scrollable box where only about five or six lines are visible at once.

For any non-trivial project this makes the instructions genuinely hard to work with. My project instructions are several paragraphs long (compliance notes covering GDPR handling, AI Act classification, logging and retention rules, etc.). To review or edit them I have to scroll a tiny window a few lines at a time, with no way to see the whole text at once. Catching an inconsistency or editing a middle paragraph means constant scrolling up and down inside the cramped box.

This is purely a sizing / editing-surface problem. The instructions themselves save and work fine; the editor is just too small to use comfortably for real content.

Current behavior

• The "Edit instructions" modal is small and cannot be resized.
• The textarea inside it is short and cannot be resized or dragged larger.
• Only a handful of lines are visible; longer instructions require scrolling within the box.
• There is no expand / fullscreen option and no larger editing view.

Proposed solution

Make the instructions editor usable for real-length content. Any of the following (in order of preference) would resolve it:

1. Make the modal (and its textarea) substantially larger by default, scaling with the window height.
2. Make the modal resizable, and/or add a draggable resize handle on the textarea so the user can enlarge it.
3. Add an expand / fullscreen toggle on the dialog for editing long instructions, then return to the compact view.

A larger or resizable editing surface would match how much text projects realistically need in their instructions.

Related

• anthropics/claude-code#40175 (Cowork instructions silently revert after saving) is a separate reliability bug on instructions, but points at the same area of the product needing attention.

Environment

• OS: Windows 11
• App: Claude Desktop, Cowork (project-level "Edit instructions" dialog)
• Version: Claude 1.26832.0 (056ee2) 2026-08-06T05:43:05.000Z