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If you follow Anthropic, you’re probably familiar with Claude Code. Since the fall of 2024, the company has been training its AI models to use and navigate computers like a human would, and the coding agent has been the most practical expression of that work, giving developers a way to automate rote programming tasks. Starting today, Anthropic is giving regular people a way to take advantage of those capabilities, with the release of a new preview feature called Claude Cowork.<\/p>\n
The company is billing Cowork as “a simpler way for anyone \u2014 not just developers \u2014 to work with Claude.” After you give the system access to a folder on your computer, it can read, edit or create new files in that folder on your behalf.<\/p>\n
Anthropic gives a few different example use cases for Cowork. For instance, you could ask Claude to organize your downloads folder, telling it to rename the files contained within to something that’s easier to parse at a glance. Another example: you could use Claude to turn screenshots of receipts and invoices into a spreadsheet for tracking expenses. Cowork can also navigate websites \u2014 provided you install Claude\u2019s Chrome plugin \u2014 and make can use Anthropic’s Connectors framework to access third-party apps like Canva.<\/p>\n
“Cowork is designed to make using Claude for new work as simple as possible. You don\u2019t need to keep manually providing context or converting Claude\u2019s outputs into the right format,” the company said. “Nor do you have to wait for Claude to finish before offering further ideas or feedback: you can queue up tasks and let Claude work through them in parallel.”<\/p>\n
If the idea of granting Claude access to your computer sounds ill-advised, Anthropic says Claude “can\u2019t read or edit anything you don\u2019t give it explicit access to.” However, the company does note the system can “take potentially destructive actions,” such as deleting a file that is important to you or misinterpreting your instructions. For that reason, Anthropic suggests it’s best to give “very clear” guidance to Claude.<\/p>\n
Anthropic isn\u2019t the first to offer a computer agent. Microsoft, for example, has been pushing Copilot hard for nearly three years, despite seemingly limited adoption. For Anthropic, the challenge will be convincing people these tools are useful where others have failed. The fact Claude Code has been universally loved by programmers may make that task easier.<\/p>\n
Anthropic briefly made Cowork preview only available to users of its pricey Claude Max subscription. That changed on Friday when the company expanded access to include customers of its $20 per month Pro plan. If you want to try Cowork for yourself, you’ll need a Mac with the Claude macOS app installed.<\/p>\n