Workbench: New folder path not properly referenced when opening a newly cloned folder with the usethis package

[SokolovAnatoliy]

System details:

Positron and OS details:

Positron Version: 2025.08.1 build 11
Code - OSS Version: 1.102.0
Commit: c09c193
Date: 2025-08-26T14:39:14.888Z (3 wks ago)
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/139.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/139.0.0.0

Session details:

R4.4.0

Describe the issue:

When using the command 'usethis::create_from_github("tidyverse/vitals") the new window that opens the folder does not properly structure the url path, leading to a "Workspace does not exist" error.

this was the workbench url path that opens:

https://workbenchdev.intranet.dow.com/s/d3f5b6ae9dc1b701853f9/?folder=file%3A%2F%2F%2Fhome%2Fu551179%2Ftidyverse_dev_day%2Fissue%2Fvitals

This issue was discovered during tidy-dev-day with help from @jennybc

We took a screenshot for the error message that I received.

The solution was to navigate to the folder manually, at which point the path is properly formed and the folder opens.

New path:
https://workbenchdev.intranet.dow.com/s/d3f5b6ae9dc1b701853f9/?folder=/home/u551179/tidyverse_dev_day/issue/vitals

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. On workbench with Positron use the command "usethis::create_from_github("tidyverse/vitals")
2. Let a new screen open when prompted.

Were there any error messages in the UI, Output panel, or Developer Tools console?

No

[jennybc]

Thanks @SokolovAnatoliy for opening this issue. I refined the title, based on what we saw together. The new folder is successfully being created on Workbench, but the incantation that usethis uses to open it is malformed for the workbench context, leading to the error. But when we navigate to that new folder through workbench UI, it's there and all is well. The URLs in @SokolovAnatoliy's post suggest that some URL escaping is the culprit re: breaking the path.