Anthropic launches Claude Cowork, an assistant that can clean up your desktop

Anthropic has launched a new tool called Cowork and it essentially functions as an agent that can perform general tasks on your computer, like sorting files on your desktop. But that’s just the start.

The premise here is that Cowork lets you point Claude at a folder on your Mac and then tell it what to do in plain English. So, for instance, if you have a messy pile of receipt screenshots on your desktop but want to turn it into a proper expense spreadsheet, you can do that. Or if you need to wrangle scattered notes into something resembling a coherent first draft – that works too.

Read, edit, organise files with plain English

The feature lives inside the macOS desktop app and runs on the same foundations as Claude Code, just without requiring you to be comfortable with command lines and developer tools.

Turns out, people were already using Claude Code for exactly these kinds of tasks anyway. Anthropic says they noticed developers pushing beyond coding into general productivity work, which prompted them to build something more accessible.

There are some genuinely useful touches here. You can queue up multiple tasks and let Claude work through them in parallel, and you can send new instructions or corrections before the first job finishes.

That said, you should probably approach this with some caution. Anthropic is being upfront about the risks involved. Vague prompts or just plain bad luck could lead Claude to delete files you didn’t want gone. And then there’s the ever-present threat of prompt injection attacks, which remains an unsolved problem across the industry.

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For now, Cowork is rolling out as a research preview exclusively for Claude Max subscribers on macOS. Windows support and cross-device sync are apparently on the roadmap, but there’s no timeline for a broader release yet. If you’re on a different plan, you can join the waitlist.

This announcement comes not long after Anthropic announced Claude for Healthcare, which of course, we’ve covered as well.