tech
January 12, 2026
Anthropic’s new Cowork tool offers Claude Code without the code
Built into the Claude Desktop app, Cowork lets users designate a specific folder where Claude can read or modify files, with further instructions given through the standard chat interface.

TL;DR
- Anthropic announced a new tool called Cowork, integrated into the Claude Desktop app.
- Cowork allows users to designate a specific folder for Claude to read or modify files.
- The tool is designed to be more accessible than Claude Code, requiring less technical expertise.
- It is inspired by users treating Claude Code as a general-purpose agentic AI tool.
- Cowork is built on the Claude Agent SDK and operates similarly to a sandboxed Claude Code instance.
- Potential use cases include assembling expense reports from receipt photos or managing media files.
- Anthropic warns about risks such as prompt injection and file deletion due to the tool's ability to take strings of actions.
- Cowork is currently in research preview and available to Max subscribers, with a waitlist for other plans.
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