Claude Cowork: what it is, who can use it, and how to share what it makes

Claude Cowork is Anthropic’s agent for knowledge work. It uses the same agentic architecture as Claude Code, with no terminal: you describe an outcome, Claude works through the steps on its own, and you come back to finished documents, spreadsheets, presentations and research. Claude Cowork is on paid Claude plans (Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise), on desktop, web and mobile. Since September 16, 2026, Anthropic has been folding it into one Claude, so on many Pro and Max accounts there is no separate Cowork button anymore.

A chat answers one prompt at a time. Cowork takes a task. Anthropic’s examples: pull a week of marketing numbers into a three-slide readout, reconcile regional exports against a budget and flag the variances, review a folder of contracts against a playbook and write a memo per contract. Claude breaks the work into parts, runs some in parallel, and shows each step as it goes, so you can redirect it.

Per Anthropic’s help center, Cowork can work in folders on your computer (desktop app), open and use websites in a built-in browser, use the apps you connected (Google Drive, Gmail, Microsoft 365, Slack and others), run tasks on a schedule, and group related work into projects with their own files, instructions and memory. A permission setting controls how much it checks with you: Manual (the default) asks before actions, Auto keeps going with automated safety checks.

Increasingly, yes. On September 16, 2026, Anthropic announced that Cowork and chat are merging into one Claude: you ask for anything in the same conversation, and Claude decides whether it is a quick answer or a task. The new experience is rolling out gradually to Pro and Max on web, desktop and mobile. Anthropic says Team and Free plans will follow, and Enterprise admins get at least 30 days’ notice. If your message box still shows “Chat” and “Cowork,” you do not have it yet; select Cowork to hand over a task.

One more change is dated: from October 6, 2026, new Cowork tasks on Pro and Max run in the cloud, and the “Only on your computer” option goes away. Work keeps running when you close your laptop. Claude still reaches the folders you connected, through the desktop app, while it is open.

Cloud sessions and the files Claude makes are saved to your Claude account, so the same work is there on desktop, web and mobile. From there, you download the file, let Claude write it into a folder you connected on your computer, or have it save to a connected app such as Google Drive. Visual work becomes an artifact you can keep editing.

Sharing an artifact follows your plan. On Pro and Max you choose “Only you” or “Anyone with the link,” or invite people by email (beta), who then sign in with a Claude account. On Team and Enterprise, artifacts stay inside your organization unless an Owner allows outside sharing. That works well for teammates. For a client, it leaves gaps: an invited client needs a Claude account, and Anthropic’s sharing docs do not describe a password, an alert when the link is opened, or serving it from your own domain.