Claude Cowork

Cowork is the answer to a question Claude Code answers for engineers: what if you could hand over a whole task rather than a single question? The difference is the material. Claude Code works on a codebase; Cowork works on documents, spreadsheets, decks and the contents of your connected apps.

What it does

Give it a goal. It works on your computer, your local files and your connected applications — Slack, Google Drive and others — and carries a multi-step task through to a finished deliverable, with citations back to the actual files and messages it used.

Tasks can be scheduled to run on a cadence, unattended. You can start one at your desk and check on it from your phone.

What it is not

• Not a chat window. The unit of work is a delegated task with a deliverable at the end, not a turn-by-turn conversation.
• Not for code. Use Claude Code for that. The three-way comparison covers where the line actually sits.
• Not on the Free plan.

Availability

Available on paid plans — Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise. Claude Desktop for macOS is the primary surface; web and mobile are in beta.

That split matters when you are planning a rollout: “Cowork is available on Pro” and “Cowork is available to your team on the machines they actually use” are not the same statement.

Safety considerations

Anthropic publishes a dedicated help-centre article on using Cowork safely. That is a signal worth reading before a broad deployment: an agent with autonomous access to local files and connected business applications has a materially different risk profile from a chat assistant, and the usage policy and your own data-handling rules both apply.