Troubleshooting

Short answers to the things people hit first.

“Claude CLI not found”

spwn runs your authenticated claude command and auto-detects it on your PATH. If it can’t find it:

• Confirm claude works in a terminal (which claude).
• In Settings → Claude CLI path, set the full path to your claude binary.

spwn doesn’t handle Claude authentication itself — if claude works in your terminal, it works in spwn. See How it works & your data.

macOS blocks the app on first launch

Releases are ad-hoc signed but not notarized, so a download from GitHub is quarantined once. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway, or clear the flag:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/spwn.app"

Updates installed by the in-app updater are never quarantined. See Installation.

My session has no branch / no ⎇ chip

Per-session branches and worktrees only exist when the project folder is a git repository. In a non-git folder, sessions run in the folder directly. Run git init in the project folder and start a new session to get isolation. See Branches & Merging.

A merge conflicted, or I can’t merge

⤵ Merge uses ordinary git. If it can’t fast-forward or hits a conflict, resolve it the way you would any merge — in a shell, git merge spwn/<id> from the base branch and fix the conflicts. The session’s branch is real git history, so nothing is stuck. See Branches & Merging.

Deleting a session warns I’ll lose work

That’s by design: if the session’s branch has commits not in its base — or uncommitted changes — the confirm dialog names exactly what you’d lose. Merge first to keep it.

A scheduled task didn’t run

Scheduled tasks run only while spwn is running. spwn stays in the menu bar when you close its window, but if you quit it fully, tasks won’t fire. A task scheduled for a time the app was closed runs once the next time spwn is open. See Scheduled Tasks.

My hook didn’t fire

• Hooks only run for sessions with their own worktree (a git repo).
• A repo hook must be committed at .spwn/hooks/<event>.sh (or <event>.d/…) — it travels into a session via the git checkout, so an uncommitted hook never runs. A global hook in ~/.spwn/hooks/ doesn’t need committing.
• In an <event>.d/ folder, a file only runs if it’s executable or ends in .sh — a file with neither is skipped.
• Global hooks can be turned off in Settings → Global hooks; check it’s on.
• Check the Hooks tab in the session’s Inspector for the last run’s output and exit status. See Hooks.

Where does spwn store my data?

Everything is local, under ~/Library/Application Support/com.markbarta.spwn/: projects and Merge trays, settings, per-session checkpoints, and (for the App data worktree layout) worktrees. spwn only reads your Claude history under ~/.claude/; it never writes there. See How it works & your data.

Uninstall / remove all data

1. Quit spwn from its menu-bar icon.
2. Delete /Applications/spwn.app.
3. Remove its data folder: ~/Library/Application Support/com.markbarta.spwn/.
4. Optionally delete any leftover session branches or worktrees in repos you used — spwn/… branches (and legacy cm/… ones from older versions): git branch -D spwn/<id>, then git worktree prune.

Your Claude login and history under ~/.claude/ are untouched — spwn never owned them.