Anthropic’s agentic tool Cloud Code has been a big hit among some software developers and hobbyists, and now the company is bringing that method to more general office work with a new feature called Cowork.
Built on the same foundation as Cloud Code and included in the macOS cloud desktop app, Cowork allows users to give the cloud access to a specific folder on their computer and then give simple language instructions for tasks.
Anthropic gave examples like filling out expense reports from a folder full of receipt photos, writing reports based on large piles of digital notes, or rearranging folders (or cleaning out your desktop) based on a prompt.
An example demo of coworking in action
Much of this was already possible with Cloud Code, but it may not have been obvious to all users that it could be used in this way, and setting up Cloud Code required more technical knowledge. Anthropic’s goal with Cowork is to make it something that any knowledge worker—from developers to marketers—can implement immediately. Anthropic says it started working on Cowork partly because people were already using cloud code for common sense work tasks.
I’m already doing similar things through the cloud desktop app Model Reference Protocol (MCP)It’s tempting to do things like create notes directly in my Obsidian Vault based on the files I see, but it’s clearly a neat way of doing something — and there are usability features like Cloud Code here, like the ability to make new requests or amend assignments with a new message before the initial task is completed.
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