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Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

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Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#121

Post by millerm »

torben-friis wrote: post #14
MarleTangible wrote: post #4

It's incredible how many applications abuse disk access. In a similar fashion, Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and never deleted them. It even showed up as "System Data" and made me look for external drive solutions.

The system data issue on macOS is awful. I use my MacBook for a mix of dev work and music production and between docker, music libraries, update caches and the like it’s not weird for me to have to go for a fresh install once every year or two. Once that gets filled up, it’s pretty much impossible to understand where the giant block of memory is.

I simply run GrandPerspective (GUI app, https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/), or dust (terminal app, https://github.com/bootandy/dust), to give me an idea of what is going on with disk usage.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#122

Post by Someone1234 »

flatline wrote: post #104
felixrieseberg wrote: post #79

Hi, Felix from Anthropic here. I work on Claude Cowork and Claude Code. Claude Cowork uses the Claude Code agent harness running inside a Linux VM (with additional sandboxing, network controls, and filesystem mounts). We run that through Apple's virtualization framework or Microsoft's Host Compute System. This buys us three things we like a lot: (1) A computer for Claude to write software in, because so many user pro…

There's a lot that's not being said in (2). That warrants more extensive justification, especially with the issues presented in the parent post.

They're using the harnesses provided by the respective underlying Operating Systems to do virtualization.

I'd like to explore that topic more too, but I feel like the context of "we deferred to MacOS/Windows" is highly relevant context here. I'd even argue that should be the default position and that "extensive justification" is required to NOT do that.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#124

Post by ryandrake »

prmph wrote: post #32
torben-friis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system data issue on macOS is awful. I use my MacBook for a mix of dev work and music production and between docker, music libraries, update caches and the like it’s not weird for me to have to go for a fresh install once every year or two. Once that gets filled up, it’s pretty much impossible to understand where the giant block of memory is.

Yep, it is an awful situation. I'm increasingly becoming frustrated with how Apple keeps disrespecting users. I downloaded several MacOS installers, not for the MacBook I use, but intending to use them to create a partitioned USB installer (they were for macOS versions that I could clearly not even use for my current MacBook). Then, after creating the USB, since I was short of space, I deleted the installers, includi…

It's just as bas on Windows. Operating Systems and Applications have been using the user's hard drive as a trash dumping ground for decades. Temporary files, logs, caches, caches of caches, settings files, metadata files (desktop.ini, .fseventsd, .Trashes, .Spotlight-V100, .DS_Store). Developers just dump their shit all over your disk as if it belongs to them. I really think apps should have to ask permission before they can write to files, outside of direct user-initiated command.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#126

Post by skoocda »

swyx wrote: post #101
baconner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I think many of us would actually very much love to have an official (or semi official) Claude sandboxing container image base / vm base. I wonder if you all have considered making something like the cowork vm available for that?

what would you use it for?

Not OP, but having the exact VM spec your agent runs on is useful for testing. I want to make sure my code works perfectly on any ephemeral environments an agent uses for tasks, because otherwise the agent might invent some sort of degenerate build and then review against that. Seen it happen many times on Codex web.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#127

Post by intrasight »

prmph wrote: post #32
torben-friis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system data issue on macOS is awful. I use my MacBook for a mix of dev work and music production and between docker, music libraries, update caches and the like it’s not weird for me to have to go for a fresh install once every year or two. Once that gets filled up, it’s pretty much impossible to understand where the giant block of memory is.

Yep, it is an awful situation. I'm increasingly becoming frustrated with how Apple keeps disrespecting users. I downloaded several MacOS installers, not for the MacBook I use, but intending to use them to create a partitioned USB installer (they were for macOS versions that I could clearly not even use for my current MacBook). Then, after creating the USB, since I was short of space, I deleted the installers, includi…

I can't help but think back to a conversation with my girlfriend in 1984. She had just bought a PC and I had bought a Mac.

She said "Oh, you bought a toy computer. How cute!"

I've owned every architecture of Mac since then, and I still think of it is my toy computer.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#128

Post by quinncom »

felixrieseberg wrote: post #79

Hi, Felix from Anthropic here. I work on Claude Cowork and Claude Code. Claude Cowork uses the Claude Code agent harness running inside a Linux VM (with additional sandboxing, network controls, and filesystem mounts). We run that through Apple's virtualization framework or Microsoft's Host Compute System. This buys us three things we like a lot: (1) A computer for Claude to write software in, because so many user pro…

I accidentally clicked the Claude Cowork button inside the Claude desktop app. I never used it. I didn't notice anything at the time, but a week later I discovered the huge VM file on my disk.

It would be really nice to ask the user, “Are you sure you want to use Cowork, it will download and install a huge VM on your disk.”

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#129

Post by rvz »

linkregister wrote: post #96
rvz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI really give much user ability to develop a completed product, but the quality is decreasing. Professional developers will be in demand when the products/features become popular. Looking at the amount of issues, outages and rookie mistakes the employees are making leads me to believe that most of them are below junior level. If anyone were to re-interview everyone at Anthropic for their own roles with their own i…

Claude consistently tops the leaderboard in software engineering benchmarks.

You realise that excuse is completely irrelevant? For the outages and the rest of the issues above and even when it goes down you still need to know what exactly is wrong.

Using 'software engineering benchmarks' and 'leaderboards' to mask for those issues in scenarios that require rapid response or urgency doesn't make any sense and even going with that, I would expect less outages but it is in fact the opposite, especially when what we are seeing is that one outage occurrs, another one appears right afterwards almost the next day.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#130

Post by dewey »

latexr wrote: post #118
dewey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't run "du -h ~/Library/Messages" then, I've mentioned that many times before and it's crazy to me to think that Apple is just using up 100GB on my machine, just because I enable iMessage syncing and don't want to delete old conversations. One would think that's a extremely common use case and it will only grow the more years iMessage exists. Just offload them to the cloud, charge me for it if you want but every o…

System Settings > General > Storage. Click the ⓘ next to Messages. Sort by size and delete large attachments.

Appreciate the suggestion but that's similar to fixes like "Have you tried re-installing your OS, maybe that fixes the issue?".

I don't want to babysit my attachments or delete old conversations just because Apple doesn't put effort into that app. Probably my fault for still using it, but Telegram, WhatApp and Signal all manage to do it better.

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