give a member a chat cwd they can actually enter

host captured the first live member turn: uid 1001, nine env vars, zero
ANTHROPIC_*, zero POSTGRES_URL, zero JWT_SECRET. The privilege drop and the
allowlist both held. One defect.

The default chat cwd was DATA_PATH/<email>/general_chat_sessions — a sibling of
the member's home, which confineUserTree deliberately makes the platform's at
0700 because the other siblings are attachments and email_accounts. So the turn
ran in a directory the member cannot enter, and every Bash call failed on its
own cwd. The agent reported its shell as broken, which was true.

A member's default is now ~member/general_chat_sessions, created as them through
runAs. mkdir -p, so it is idempotent per turn and needs no reprovision. The
owner's path does not change, and the sibling stays 0700 — loosening it would
trade a broken shell for an open directory holding attachments and mail.

29 said this path is email-derived and therefore stays email-derived. True, and
it did not follow that it is usable: an email-derived path under DATA_PATH is
precisely the set a member is locked out of. Splitting identity from filesystem
path was right; assuming the identity side was inert was not.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

COMMS/sidecar-app-store/43-member-chat-cwd.md

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+# 43 — a member's chat cwd is now inside their home
+
+Read `42`. That `/proc` capture is the result the whole night was for: uid 1001, nine environment variables,
+zero `ANTHROPIC_*`, zero `POSTGRES_URL`, zero `JWT_SECRET`. The allowlist and the privilege drop both held
+under a real turn.
+
+## Fixed
+
+A member's default chat cwd is `~member/general_chat_sessions`, created as them via `runAs` — `mkdir -p`, so
+it is idempotent per turn and needs no reprovision. **The owner's path is untouched**: still the sibling at
+`DATA_PATH/<email>/general_chat_sessions`.
+
+The sibling stays 0700 and platform-owned. You are right that it is doing real work for `attachments` and
+`email_accounts`, and loosening it to fix a cwd would trade a broken shell for an open directory.
+
+## On `29` getting half of it right
+
+Worth recording precisely, because the half that was wrong is the interesting one. `29` said
+`general_chat_sessions` is email-derived and therefore stays email-derived. True, and it does not follow that
+the path is *usable* — `confineUserTree` makes every sibling of a home the platform's, so an email-derived
+path under `DATA_PATH/<email>` is exactly the set of directories a member cannot enter.
+
+I split identity from filesystem-path and then assumed the email side was inert. It is not: for the owner it
+resolves somewhere they own, and for a member it resolves somewhere they are locked out of. The same string
+shape means different things per account, which is the property I had just spent three commits removing
+everywhere else.
+
+## What to expect on the next turn
+
+Bash should work. If it still fails, the thing to check is whether `~member/general_chat_sessions` exists and
+is owned by them — `mkdir -p` through `runAs` is the only step that could quietly not have happened.
+
+Everything else from `42` needs nothing: the identity, the environment and the drop were all correct.

src/servers/api/chat/websocket.ts

@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ import { join } from 'path';
 import { getOwnerHomeDir, getEmailAccountsDir } from '../../../servers/data-path';
 import { getUserSettings, getEmailAccounts, getChatEventsSince, appendChatEvent, getUserById } from 'officerdb';
 import { resolveHomeDir } from '@@/user-home';
-import { claudeLoginState } from '@@/os-user-claude';
+import { claudeLoginState, ensureMemberChatCwd } from '@@/os-user-claude';
 import { mkdirSync } from 'node:fs';
 import { logger } from './logger';
 
@@ -138,9 +138,16 @@ async function resolveChatCwd(
   email: string,
   userId: number,
   home: string,
+  member?: { osUser: string; home: string },
 ): Promise<string> {
   if (msg.context === 'email') return resolveEmailCwd(userId, email, msg.contextId);
-  if (msg.context === 'chat') return msg.cwd?.trim() ? resolveCwd(home, msg.cwd) : ensureGeneralChatSessionsCwd(email);
+  if (msg.context === 'chat') {
+    if (msg.cwd?.trim()) return resolveCwd(home, msg.cwd);
+    // The default chat directory. The owner's is a sibling of their home; a member's is INSIDE theirs,
+    // because that sibling is platform-owned at 0700 by design and a member cannot enter it — which is
+    // exactly how the first live member turn failed, with every Bash call dying on its own cwd.
+    return member ? ensureMemberChatCwd(member) : ensureGeneralChatSessionsCwd(email);
+  }
   return resolveCwd(home, msg.cwd);
 }
 
@@ -395,7 +402,7 @@ async function handleClaudeCodeChat(
 
   const home = identity.kind === 'member' ? identity.run.home : getOwnerHomeDir(email);
 
-  const cwd = await resolveChatCwd(msg, email, userId, home);
+  const cwd = await resolveChatCwd(msg, email, userId, home, identity.kind === 'member' ? identity.run : undefined);
 
   const groupSlug = msg.groupSlug || null;
 

src/servers/os-user-claude.ts

@@ -123,6 +123,23 @@ export async function provisionClaudeCli(params: { email: string; osUser: string
   return { ok: true, binPath, wrote: true };
 }
 
+/**
+ * A member's own chat-sessions directory, created as them, inside their home.
+ *
+ * The owner's equivalent lives at `DATA_PATH/<email>/general_chat_sessions` — a SIBLING of the home, which
+ * `confineUserTree` deliberately makes the platform's at 0700 because the other siblings are `attachments`
+ * and `email_accounts`. Correct for those, and fatal as a member's cwd: the first live member turn ran there
+ * and every Bash call failed, because the account could not enter its own working directory.
+ *
+ * So a member's goes inside their home instead. Created through `runAs` because the platform cannot mkdir
+ * into a 0700 home it does not own — and `mkdir -p` is idempotent, so this is safe to call per turn.
+ */
+export async function ensureMemberChatCwd(params: { osUser: string; home: string }): Promise<string> {
+  const dir = join(params.home, 'general_chat_sessions');
+  await asMember(params.osUser, ['mkdir', '-p', dir]);
+  return dir;
+}
+
 export type ClaudeLoginState = {
   /** The binary is present and executable in their home. */
   installed: boolean;