[BUG] Cowork sessions created in Claude Desktop do not appear in the web account session list

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?

Filing here because there is no public tracker for Cowork and this looks
like a data-visibility defect rather than a support question. Happy to
move it if there is a better venue.

Summary

Cowork sessions created in the Claude Desktop app appear not to be
indexed in the web account's session list. After switching machines,
roughly a month of daily Cowork sessions is entirely absent from the
account, while cloud-originated sessions from before and after that
period are present.

Environment

• Individual Max plan
• Sessions created in Claude Desktop on macOS, roughly July 20 to

August 18, 2026

• Original machine was subsequently wiped via Erase All Content and

Settings

• Now viewing the same account on a new Mac, current app version, on

both web and desktop

Expected

Cowork sessions created on one machine appear in the account's session
list when signed in from another machine, consistent with the
documentation stating that sessions and files live with your Claude
account and follow you across desktop, web, and mobile.

Actual

Filtering Recents to Cowork returns six sessions total for the lifetime
of the account: one on Jul 21, two on Aug 21, two on Aug 27, and one
created today. There are zero Cowork sessions between Jul 21 and Aug 21,
which is the period of near-daily Cowork use on the desktop app.
Sessions exist on both sides of the gap.

Archived is empty. The sessions are not inside any project. No Claude
Code sessions exist on the account.

Secondary issue

Search does not appear to index Cowork sessions. Searching any term
returns only chat results, never tasks. This makes a missing Cowork
session effectively unfindable through the UI, and it also means users
searching for one get a false negative rather than an empty-index signal.

Possible relevance

Anthropic's platform documentation distinguishes local Cowork sessions
(Claude Desktop, running on the user's machine) from remote Cowork
sessions (claude.ai, running in Anthropic's cloud), and states that both
are captured server side with a six-year default retention including
tool calls, tool results and text file contents. If local sessions are
captured server side but never indexed into the account's session list,
then losing the originating machine makes them permanently unreachable
by the user despite the data being retained. That seems worth
confirming either way.

#Impact

In my case the affected sessions contain the only remaining copy of the
source code for a shipped iOS application. I have an open support ticket
about the recovery side of this. This issue is about the visibility
defect, which would affect any Desktop Cowork user who changes machines.

What Should Happen?

A Cowork session created in the Claude Desktop app should appear in the
account's session list when signed in from any other machine, since
sessions and files are documented as living with your Claude account and
following you across desktop, web, and mobile.

Concretely:

1. Cowork sessions created on the desktop app should be listed under

Recents when filtered to Cowork, regardless of which machine the user
is currently signed in on.

1. Cowork sessions should be returned by search. Currently search

returns chat results only, so a user looking for a missing Cowork
session gets a false negative rather than an accurate empty result.

1. Losing or wiping the machine a Cowork session was created on should

not make that session unreachable from the account, given that the
documentation describes server-side capture with six-year retention
for both local and remote Cowork sessions.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

1. Use Cowork in the Claude Desktop app on macOS over an extended period.
2. Wipe or lose access to that machine.
3. Sign into the same account on a different machine, on web or desktop.
4. Go to Recents and filter to Cowork.
5. The sessions created on the original machine are not listed.

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

N/A: not Claude Code. Claude Desktop 1.46388.4 on macOS (arm64).

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

_No response_