Anthropic made a version of its coding AI for regular people

If you follow Anthropic, you probably know Claude Code. Since fall 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 everyday users a way to take advantage of these features, with the release of a new preview feature called Claude Cowork.

The company touts Cowork as “an easier way for anyone, not just developers, to work with Claude.” After you give the system access to a folder on your computer, it can read, modify, or create new files in that folder on your behalf.

Anthropic gives some examples of different use cases for Cowork. For example, you can ask Claude to organize your downloads folder, telling him to rename the files in it to something easier to scan at a glance. Another example: You can use Claude to turn screenshots of receipts and invoices into a spreadsheet to track expenses. Cowork can also browse websites – provided you install Claude’s Chrome plugin – and use Anthropic’s Connectors framework to access third-party apps like Canva.

“Cowork is designed to make using Claude for new work as simple as possible. You don’t need to keep providing context manually or converting Claude’s output into the correct format,” the company said. “You also don’t need to wait for Claude to finish before offering further ideas or feedback: you can queue tasks and let Claude run them in parallel.

If the idea of ​​granting Claude access to your computer seems ill-advised, Anthropic says that Claude “can’t read or modify anything you don’t give him explicit access to.” However, the company notes that the system can “take potentially destructive actions,” such as deleting a file important to you or misinterpreting your instructions. For this reason, Anthropic suggests that it is best to give Claude “very clear” advice.

Anthropic is not the first to offer a computer agent. Microsoft, for example, has been pushing Copilot for nearly three years, despite seemingly limited adoption. For Anthropic, the challenge will be to convince people that these tools are useful where others have failed. The fact that Claude Code is universally loved by programmers might make this task easier.

For now, Anthropic is offering users of its pricey Claude Max subscription first access to the preview. If you want to try Cowork for yourself, you’ll also need a Mac with the Claude macOS app installed. For everyone else, you will have to register on a waiting list.