Anthropic's Claude advances on more office worker tasks
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
Anthropic on Monday unveiled Cowork, a new AI product designed to handle everyday office work with the same autonomy as its Claude Code vibe coding tool.
Why it matters: AI companies are racing to sell agentic software that promises to simplify information work, even as data continues to show that companies are still struggling to see productivity benefits.
How it works: Cowork lets users give Claude access to a specific folder on their computer.
- From there, the system plans and executes tasks on its own — reading, editing and creating files while updating the user on its progress, rather than waiting for step-by-step prompts.
- Cowork can create new spreadsheets with a list of expenses from a pile of screenshots or organize a messy downloads folder by renaming the files so they make sense based on their content.
- Anthropic says the tool can also create a first draft of a report from your scattered notes.
The big picture: Anthropic frames Cowork as a shift away from conversational AI toward delegating work to an agent.
- Once a task is set, Cowork makes a plan and carries it out with far more agency than users would see in a regular Claude conversation, according to the company.
Reality check: Workers and managers alike say many AI tools reduce productivity, creating mistake-riddled work that requires more time to correct.
- Anthropic says that concern around "workslop" is exactly why it built Cowork the way it did. The feature uses the same architecture as Claude Code, which software engineers rely on for production work — and they wouldn't trust it if the output required constant cleanup, the company says. Cowork is intended to keep you in the loop, so you can steer.
Cowork launches Monday as a research preview for Claude Max subscribers on macOS.
- Anthropic says it plans to expand access and add features over time.
Catch up quick: Claude Code took off over the winter, when developers and hobbyists had time to experiment with the advanced model powering Anthropic's vibe coding tool.
- Anthropic says Cowork emerged after Claude Code users repurposed the coding tool for nontechnical tasks, pushing the company to build a more approachable version for desk work.
Yes, but: Agentic tools that can access and act on user files raise privacy and data-handling questions.
- Wired's sources say that OpenAI is asking third-party contractors to upload actual work artifacts (Word docs, spreadsheets, presentations) from past jobs to help evaluate the performance of agents, with workers themselves responsible for stripping out confidential or personally identifiable information. 
- OpenAI, contacted by Axios, said it had no additional comment.
What we're watching: Whether tools like Cowork can change how work gets done without compromising enterprise security and privacy.
