Claude basically broke their "Projects" overnight and I’m pissed

What the hell happened to Claude Cowork Projects?

I had multiple local projects connected to folders with actual workflows set up. Claude would access websites, pull info, process it, then read/write to specific local folders. Worked great.

Then they quietly changed the default setting to run project in cloud and basically broke the whole thing.

First, my workflows suddenly couldn’t access the internet because apparently they were running in the cloud now. After wasting ages debugging it, I found the barely explained “Run on computer only” toggle is settings seems to fix it.

But the bigger problem is that you apparently can’t create a project with a persistent local folders anymore.

Previously I could attach another folder to the PROJECT (after project was already created, a different folder than the 'project folder'), and every Cowork session inside it had access to that folder. Now the project context only lets me add individual files. No folders.

And yes, Claude Code exists. But Claude Code is not a replacement for Projects. Its organization is a mess if you have a bunch of different workflows/projects.

The worst part is my old projects apparently still had this functionality. I deleted one while troubleshooting because I assumed it was bugged, recreated it, and now I literally cannot recreate the setup I had before.

Who changes something this fundamental with basically no warning or migration path??

People build actual workflows around this stuff. You can’t just randomly change the entire architecture and hope nobody notices.

I’ve wasted way too much time trying to figure out whether this was a bug or intentional.

If there’s genuinely no way anymore to have a Cowork project with persistent access to local folders, I’m probably just moving these workflows somewhere else.

This is such a stupid way to handle a major product change.