Live artifact connector grants don't survive update_artifact, and the re-approval prompt never appears

[cnv-azri]

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Summary

Any Cowork live artifact that calls an MCP connector tool loses that connector's access the moment the artifact's content is updated. The desktop app's own tooling reports that the user should be re-prompted to re-approve the connector, but no Allow/Deny prompt ever appears — the artifact just fails closed on every subsequent connector call. This was confirmed on two separate artifacts, including one (bid-scraper) that had a long-standing, working Salesforce connection broken by a single content-only update with no code change to its connector usage.

Environment

• Product: Claude Cowork, desktop app (live artifacts feature)
• Affected connector: a custom Salesforce SOQL connector (tool name format mcp__<connector-id>__soqlQuery)
• Artifacts involved: vendor-scorecard-dashboard, vendor-scorecard-dashboard-b, vendor-scorecard-dashboard-c (test), bid-scraper (test)
• Date observed: 2026-08-04

Reproduction steps

1. Take vendor-scorecard-dashboard, a live artifact that calls a Salesforce SOQL connector (mcp__7fec64a8-7bb9-488b-8beb-762423d5ed94__soqlQuery). Push an update via update_artifact (rebuild of the same app, no change to which connector it calls).
2. Run the artifact's Scan action, which calls the connector on a user click (not on page load).
3. Observed: the call fails after 2 retries with Tool "mcp__7fec64a8-7bb9-488b-8beb-762423d5ed94__soqlQuery" is not in this artifact's mcp_tools allowlist. No Allow/Deny dialog appears at any point — before, during, or after the failure.
4. Create a brand-new artifact (vendor-scorecard-dashboard-b) from scratch with create_artifact, same content, same connector. Same result: no prompt, same allowlist failure.
5. Control test: take bid-scraper, a different, previously-working artifact that has called the same Salesforce connector successfully for weeks. Push an unrelated content update via update_artifact (swapped in different HTML entirely, to isolate that the break is caused by the update mechanism itself, not by anything specific to Vendor Scorecard's code).
6. Observed: bid-scraper's Salesforce feature immediately breaks the same way — no prompt, allowlist failure — despite having worked immediately before that update.
7. Restore bid-scraper's original content via a second update_artifact call. Confirmed: this restore call itself also clears the grant again (per the tool's own returned message, quoted below), so bid-scraper is now also left in the broken state, through no code change of its own.

Exact error text

From the artifact's in-app log during Scan:

Scan started.
⚠ Query failed (Tool "mcp__7fec64a8-7bb9-488b-8beb-762423d5ed94__soqlQuery" ) — retrying in 1000ms (attempt 1/3)…
⚠ Query failed (Tool "mcp__7fec64a8-7bb9-488b-8beb-762423d5ed94__soqlQuery" ) — retrying in 1000ms (attempt 2/3)…
✗ Scan failed: Tool "mcp__7fec64a8-7bb9-488b-8beb-762423d5ed94__soqlQuery" is not in this artifact's mcp_tools allowlist.

From the update_artifact tool call itself, confirming the mechanism:

Artifact "bid-scraper" updated on the connected desktop. Its connector grants were cleared — the remote bridge
replaces HTML without re-approving connector access, so the user must re-grant any connectors the artifact needs.

What we ruled out

• Not a wrong/stale connector ID. The same tool ID (mcp__7fec64a8-...__soqlQuery) is used by cost-code-distribution and invoice-auditor, both currently working. Confirmed by direct comparison of each artifact's source.
• Not a session-level Salesforce auth issue. A separate, named Salesforce connector available to the Claude session itself (Salesforce_Read-Only) works fine and returns real data throughout this investigation. The broken connection is specific to the artifact-level grant, not the underlying Salesforce credentials.
• Not specific to one artifact or to first-time grants. Originally suspected the failure was limited to an artifact requesting connector access for the first time (Vendor Scorecard's live Salesforce logic is new this week). Ruled out by the bid-scraper control test: an artifact with a long-established, working grant broke the exact same way after a content-only update.
• Not fixable from the desktop UI. There is no settings screen or per-artifact "Connections" panel to manually re-grant a connector — confirmed by checking every option available on the artifact card (Pop out, View). The only documented approval path is "approved during creation or update" (per Claude's Help Center article on live artifacts), and that path is exactly what's failing to surface.

Impact

Any live artifact that uses an MCP connector will lose that connector's access on its very next update, with no way to restore it through the UI. This means:

• cost-code-distribution and invoice-auditor are currently working only because neither has been updated since its last successful grant — the next update to either will very likely break it the same way.
• Any workflow that depends on iterating on a live, connector-backed artifact (fix a bug, ship an update, artifact still works) is broken, since every ship cycle silently kills the artifact's data access.

Suggested fix / ask

• Root cause is very likely in how update_artifact (and possibly create_artifact) handles connector re-approval — the intended flow ("approved during creation or update," per docs) should show an Allow/Deny prompt but doesn't fire, or fires somewhere the user never sees it.
• This may be the same underlying issue as GitHub issue #57398 (Cowork live artifact connector tool calls trigger a one-shot Allow/Deny prompt with no "Always Allow," even when the connector is set to Always Allow) — worth checking whether they share a root cause, though #57398 describes a prompt that appears but is limited, while this report describes a prompt that never appears at all.

Related artifacts (for reference during investigation)

Artifact id	Status
vendor-scorecard-dashboard	Broken — connector allowlist failure, no prompt
vendor-scorecard-dashboard-b	Deleted (test copy, reproduced same failure on fresh creation)
vendor-scorecard-dashboard-c	Working — offline seed data baked in, no live connector calls, workaround only
bid-scraper	Broken — control test, previously working, broken by an unrelated content update
cost-code-distribution	Currently working — untested against a fresh update, at risk
invoice-auditor	Currently working — untested against a fresh update, at risk

Relevant Links

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