diff --git a/plugins/scaffolder-backend/src/scaffolder/stages/templater/cra/index.ts b/plugins/scaffolder-backend/src/scaffolder/stages/templater/cra/index.ts
index 4f871516e9..371586d1da 100644
--- a/plugins/scaffolder-backend/src/scaffolder/stages/templater/cra/index.ts
+++ b/plugins/scaffolder-backend/src/scaffolder/stages/templater/cra/index.ts
@@ -40,7 +40,10 @@ export class CreateReactAppTemplater implements TemplaterBase {
     const intermediateDir = path.join(workspacePath, 'template');
     await fs.ensureDir(intermediateDir);
 
-    const resultDir = path.join(workspacePath, 'result');
+    const mountDirs = new Map([
+      [await fs.realpath(intermediateDir), '/template'],
+      [await fs.realpath(intermediateDir), '/result'],
+    ]);
 
     await runDockerContainer({
       imageName: 'node:lts-alpine',
@@ -49,10 +52,12 @@ export class CreateReactAppTemplater implements TemplaterBase {
         componentName as string,
         withTypescript ? ' --template typescript' : '',
       ],
-      inputDir: intermediateDir,
-      outputDir: intermediateDir,
+      mountDirs,
       logStream: logStream,
       dockerClient: dockerClient,
+      // Set the home directory inside the container as something that applications can
+      // write to, otherwise they will just fail trying to write to /
+      envVars: ['HOME=/tmp'],
       createOptions: {
         Entrypoint: ['npx'],
         WorkingDir: '/result',
@@ -67,6 +72,7 @@ export class CreateReactAppTemplater implements TemplaterBase {
       throw new Error('No data generated by cookiecutter');
     }
 
+    const resultDir = path.join(workspacePath, 'result');
     await fs.move(path.join(intermediateDir, generated), resultDir);
 
     const extraAnnotations: Record<string, string> = {};