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oeway/webcontainer-claude-code-limitations.md

Created August 26, 2025 01:35
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webcontainer-claude-code-limitations.md

Test Results Summary for Running Claude Code in WebContainers

✅ Working Tools:

  1. File System Operations - All working perfectly: - LS - Lists directories - Read - Reads files (including images, PDFs, notebooks) - Write - Creates new files - Edit - Modifies existing files - MultiEdit - Multiple edits in one operation
  2. Search Tools - Fully functional: - Glob - Pattern matching for files - Grep - Content searching with regex support
  3. Web Tools - Both operational: - WebSearch - Can search and retrieve web results - WebFetch - Can fetch and analyze web content
  4. Specialized Tools - Working: - Task - Can spawn sub-agents for complex tasks - NotebookEdit - Can edit Jupyter notebooks - TodoWrite - Task management system
  5. Background Process Tools - Partially working: - BashOutput - Can retrieve output from background processes - KillBash - Can attempt to kill processes

❌ Non-Working/Limited:

  1. Bash Command Execution - Completely broken due to shell syntax error: - All Bash commands fail with: unsupported shell syntax error - This appears to be a ZSH shell snapshot issue

Key Environment Constraints Discovered:

  1. No Shell Access: The Bash tool consistently fails, preventing any command-line operations like checking Node.js version, running npm commands, or system operations.
  2. File System Access: Full read/write access to /home/x6btcpe57a5kozq1eahsr21kcd65p6-kcbw/ directory with working file manipulation tools.
  3. Web Capabilities: Can fetch and search web content, useful for retrieving documentation and current information.
  4. Agent Spawning: Can create sub-agents for complex tasks, demonstrated by successfully creating a Python factorial function.
  5. Browser-Based Limitations: This appears to be running in a WebContainer or similar browser-based Node.js environment where: - Traditional shell commands don't work - File system is virtualized but functional - Network requests work through the web tools

The environment is essentially a sandboxed Node.js runtime in the browser with file system emulation but no actual shell/terminal access.

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