[Cowork web] "Temporarily unable to authenticate. Please retry. (×3)" banner while status page shows all systems operational
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Sep 29, 2026
Surface: claude.ai Cowork in the web browser (Chrome, macOS). Not the CLI; CLI-only template fields not applicable.
What happened (29 Sep 2026, afternoon Eastern): A cloud Cowork session showed a yellow banner: "Temporarily unable to authenticate. Please retry. (×3)". The app retried three times and failed each time. No action by the user or the session triggered it.
Status page at the same moment: status.claude.com showed All Systems Operational, including claude.ai and Claude Cowork.
Expected:
- A retry that succeeds silently, or
- If auth really failed, a clear cause and a working action (a Retry or Sign in button), and
- The status page reflecting it if it affects more than one user.
Actual: A banner with no button and no cause, counting failed retries, while status reports no issue. The user can't tell whether the session is still running or whether work was lost.
Asks:
- Put a Retry / Re-authenticate action in the banner.
- Say whether the running session is affected.
- Log the auth failure, so a session can report it when the user asks what happened.