Story
Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning
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Latest report
Overview
The cowork feature in Claude Desktop creates a 10GB VM bundle that leads to significant performance degradation, including slow startup, UI lag, and slow responses. The VM bundle file, located at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/vm_bundles/claudevm.bundle/rootfs.img, grows to 10GB and is not cleaned up, causing performance issues to worsen over time during a single session.
Summary from github.com.
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Community reactions
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Hacker News · github.com
Historical count: 5 · 5 saved in sample · Historical sample
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Based on 5 sampled comments from this thread. Analyzed 2026-03-02.
- Praise: The Claude Cowork feature leverages a VM to provide a dedicated environment for AI agents, enhancing their ability to write custom scripts and solve user problems effectively.
- Praise: Using a VM for AI development allows separation from the user's local environment, which can lead to improved safety and performance in executing tasks.
- Concern: There are concerns that the quality of AI-generated products may decline as reliance on AI tools increases, potentially diminishing the role of professional developers.
- Concern: The lack of effective storage management in applications leads to excessive disk usage, which can hinder user experience and efficiency.