claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix [BUG] Artifacts and Scheduled Tasks fail when ~/Documents is a symlink (virtiofs cannot mkdir through symlinks) [2 comments, 3 participants]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Two separate Claude.ai features fail with the same root cause: virtiofs (the VM filesystem layer) cannot mkdir through a symlink, so any feature that tries to create or mount a path under ~/Documents/Claude/ fails before it starts.

Error seen in Artifacts:

RPC error: failed to mount /mnt/.virtiofs-root/shared/Users/amanda.**/Documents/Claude/Artifacts/as .artifacts/stakeholder-pulse: source path does not exist and could not be created: mkdir /mnt/.virtiofs-root/shared/Users/amanda.*/Documents/Claude: file exists Also affects: Scheduled Tasks — same error; worked around by manually updating scheduled-tasks.json to use the resolved OneDrive path instead of the symlinked ~/Documents path.

Root cause: virtiofs sees the Documents symlink as a file, not a directory, so mkdir on any child path fails with "file exists."

Expected behavior: Claude.ai should resolve symlinks (realpath) before constructing virtiofs mount paths.

Workaround: Manually replace /Documents/Claude/... paths with the real path (/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-*****/Documents 1/Claude/...) in any config files. Not possible for Artifacts — no user-accessible config.

What Should Happen?

Before constructing a virtiofs mount path, Claude should resolve any symlinks in the path to their real filesystem location (equivalent to running realpath on the path). This ensures the mount succeeds regardless of whether components like ~/Documents are symlinks.

For example, instead of mounting:

/Users/amanda.[email protected]/Documents/Claude/Artifacts/stakeholder-pulse Claude should resolve and mount:

/Users/amanda.[email protected]/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Cohesity/Documents 1/Claude/Artifacts/stakeholder-pulse This would make Artifacts and Scheduled Tasks work correctly for any user whose ~/Documents (or any parent directory) is managed by OneDrive, iCloud Drive, or any other sync client that uses symlinks.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

Set up OneDrive on macOS such that ~/Documents is a symlink to ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-<tenant>/Documents 1/ (this is OneDrive's default macOS configuration) Open Claude.ai web app In any conversation, create or re-open an Artifact (e.g. a stakeholder dashboard) — triggering the VM to mount ~/Documents/Claude/Artifacts/<artifact-name>/ Observe the "Something went wrong" RPC error For Scheduled Tasks (same bug, different trigger):

Same symlink setup as above Have at least one scheduled task configured (paths stored as ~/Documents/Claude/Scheduled/...) Trigger a scheduled task run Observe task fails before execution with the same virtiofs mount error Note: The symlink itself is not unusual — OneDrive creates it automatically on macOS when Documents folder sync is enabled. This likely affects any user with OneDrive (or potentially iCloud Drive) syncing their Documents folder.

Claude Model

Not sure / Multiple models

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

Prior to v2.1.119

Claude Code Version

v2.1.119

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

No response