[FEATURE] claude.ai Projects: let a session read across projects, and let projects be grouped
Concerns claude.ai Projects as used from Cowork (cloud sessions) and the desktop app, not the CLI. CLI-only template fields are not applicable.
The problem
A Projects list grows one project per task, and there is currently no way to either consolidate it or work across it.
Two gaps, related but separable:
1. A session can only ever see the project it was started in.
The Projects tool available to a cloud session is bound to a single project. There is no enumeration call — no "list my projects", no way to name a different project and read its docs. Asked "can you see all my projects?", the honest answer is no, one.
2. Projects cannot be grouped.
The list is flat. Starring and archiving are the only organising features. There is no way to nest, group, or merge, so a user with related projects (Client X, Social media for Client X, Outreach for Client X, Articles for Client X, …) has no route to consolidate them except opening each one by hand and copying its contents out.
Concrete case
A user with 27 projects, seven of them for one client. To decide which seven could safely be merged, a session needs each project's custom instructions and doc list. From a cloud session that is impossible — it can read exactly one. The workaround was to hand a written inventory spec to a local desktop session so it could drive a browser and read the projects through the web UI, one at a time.
That is a browser-automation workaround for reading the user's own data.
What was checked first
- Admin API — covers organization members, invites, workspaces, workspace members, API keys, service accounts, federation issuers and rules. No endpoint for claude.ai projects or project docs. Console "workspaces" are a different object from claude.ai projects.
- Compliance API — mentioned as covering "chats, files, and projects", but it is read-only audit and gated behind enterprise org-owner access. Not a route for an ordinary user's own projects.
- Product surface — no folder, group, move, or merge affordance in the projects list; no bulk selection.
- Connector registry — no first-party connector exposes claude.ai projects.
What would fix it
Either one is independently useful:
- A read API (or connector) over a user's own projects and their docs, so a session can be pointed at a project other than its own.
- Grouping in the projects list — folders, tags, or a parent/child relation — plus a merge or move-docs-between-projects action.
Related
- #68262 — subfolders inside a single project. Adjacent, and does not address either gap here: it organises one project's contents, not the set of projects.
- #75856 — folder-linked session groups.
Filed after hitting this while trying to consolidate a real projects list.