The hourly sweep called lstatSync and realpathSync on every live session's working directory, so a linked case on a mount that stopped answering blocked the event loop 30 s after boot and then every hour; the old sweep was fully async. uploadDirs() now probes the workspace with probePathKind() first and skips an unknown path without touching it, then uses fs.promises for the lstat and realpath. The sweep keeps the probe's stall cap; cleanupSession(), acting on one path at the user's request, passes pastCap and removes the directories with fs.rm.
Refusing an upload dir that sits strictly inside the data dir protected nothing (it only ever holds uploads, and a link is already excluded by lstat) while the route kept writing there, so uploads under a workspace like the ~/.codeman/app that install.sh clones were never swept and never removed. Only the two cases that matter stay refused: the upload dir being the data dir, or containing it.
Also: the ignore file's take-back after a failed write no longer replaces the error that caused it with its own, and the shared-dir test's header no longer names the fixed port it stopped using.
A pasted image landed in <workspace>/.claude-images/, a name that belongs to another tool, in a folder nothing ignored, so it showed up in git status of every case that ever received a paste. Uploads now go to a flat <workspace>/.codeman-uploads/ that carries a .gitignore of `*` (written once, never over a file already there): in the workspace because that is the only path identical for a local agent and a container, flat because a nested .codeman/ is the data dir itself when the workspace is the home directory.
The directory names live in paste-image-gc.ts alone. The old folder receives nothing but stays readable for one release: the hourly sweep and the delete cleanup go through uploadDirs(), the image watcher's ignore filter reads the names. uploadDirs() lists only real directories, none that is, contains or sits inside the data dir, and nothing for a remote session, since both consumers delete. The route refuses a remote (SSH) session before touching disk: the file would land on this host under the remote path, where the agent cannot read it.
test/paste-image-dir-shared.test.ts binds port 0 and leaves the port guard's legacy list.
Decided in #553.
JD