Anthropic’s Cowork is a more accessible version of Claude Code – News

Anthropic PBC wants to make its generative artificial intelligence coding bot Claude Code more accessible with the launch of a new feature called Claude Cowork, available in preview starting today.

The company said Cowork is a “simpler way for anyone – not just developers – to work with Claude.” To get started, all users have to do is give Cowork access to a folder on their computers, and then it will be able to read, edit or create new files within it on their behalf. It’s a novel approach that marks a shift away from Claude Code’s focus on developers, making the tool easier for noncoders to use to automate document creation, file management and other productivity tasks.

Claude Cowork is currently available to Max subscribers as a research preview, and there is a waitlist for users on other plans, Anthropic said.

In a blog post, the company explained that it was inspired to create Cowork due to the growing number of Claude Code users who are asking the bot to achieve non-coding tasks. Many users are treating it the same as a general-purpose agentic AI tool, and it’s more than capable of being that, for it’s built on top of the Claude Agent software development kit, which means it shares many of the same capabilities as Anthropic’s standard foundation models.

With the folder partition, users can easily manage what files Cowork is able to access, and because it’s controlled through a regular chat interface rather than a command-line tool, it’s far less intimidating for noncoders.

Anthropic believes Cowork paves the way for many more use cases. For instance, it said someone might use it to create an expense report from a folder containing images of receipts. Some early adopters have put Cowork to use in managing media files, scanning social media for insights and analyzing conversations.

The company did warn of some risks, however. Like Claude Code, Claude Cowork is designed to take multiple actions without user inputs that explicitly command it to perform each step, and that can be dangerous if someone provides vague or contradictory instructions.

Anthropic specifically warned of the risks of prompt injection attacks and Cowork’s ability to delete files, and recommended that users make their instructions as clear as they possibly can. “These risks aren’t new with Cowork, but it might be the first time you’re using a more advanced tool that moves beyond a simple conversation,” the company explained.

Anthropic launched the original Claude Code back in November 2024 and it has gone on to become one of the company’s most popular products. It has built on that success, launching multiple updates in recent months, introducing a new web interface in October and a Slack integration in December, but today’s update makes it vastly more accessible.

Image: Lenny Rachitsky/Anthropic