So anthropic just dropped something pretty interesting. Claude Cowork. and i think it might be a bigger deal than people realize
It's basically Claude Code but for everyone. not just us devs
what is cowork actually
Ok so here's the deal. you give Claude access to a folder on your computer and it can read, edit, create files. all on its own. no terminal, no command line, no coding needed
The examples they showed are kinda boring on purpose. organizing your messy downloads folder, turning receipt screenshots into spreadsheets, drafting reports from random notes. mundane stuff. but that's the point right
Boris Cherny who made Claude Code said people were already using it for non-coding stuff. vacation research, slide decks, cleaning up email, even recovering wedding photos from old hard drives. so they just made it official :)
what people are saying
The reactions have been all over the place. pretty entertaining actually
the believers
@hussamfyi on X had a good take:
"Claude cowork is a useful reminder that the wrapper is the product. Tech twitter might have you convinced a terminal is the ideal form factor, but packaged experiences with ready-to-use presets is what people want/will use."
And Raiza Martin was pretty hyped:
"It's an amazing research partner, data analyst, even a second brain when I can't quite remember something. The ability to connect to your files, external sources, and all of the goodness of Claude is really as close to AGI as I've ever felt."
Alexis Ohanian just wrote "This is big." fair enough haha
the skeptics
Claire Vo from ChatPRD had some criticism. said it shows too much of its internal process for regular users but also limits flexibility for power users. though she admitted it still works better than normal chat
Karthik Hariharan was more direct: "In general, my feeling is code always wins in the end." i mean, maybe. we'll see
the worried ones
Simon Willison wrote a really good piece about the security side. anthropic tells users to "monitor Claude for suspicious actions" and he's like... that's not realistic for normal people
"I do not think it is fair to tell regular non-programmer users to watch out for 'suspicious actions that may indicate prompt injection'!"
He's right. the people cowork targets are exactly the ones who won't spot when something's going wrong. and yeah some users have already lost files from bad prompts :(
the startup killer thing
Ok this is where it gets spicy. Fortune ran a piece saying cowork could threaten dozens of startups
And i mean... it's true? file organization, document generation, data extraction. there are so many vc-backed startups doing exactly this. when anthropic bundles it all for $100/month your runway looks a lot shorter
But also, deep domain expertise and good ux can still win. generic file management isn't the same as specialized workflow tools. still though, the pressure is real
my take
Been watching this space for a while now. here's what i actually think matters:
Psychology is the product. Zvi Mowshowitz nailed this. command line vs chat interface is mostly just perception. both handle text, both can run code. but one feels like talking to someone and the other feels like bash scripts. that shift could be huge
The speed is the real story. They built cowork in like 10 days. using Claude Code. so yeah we're in a recursive loop where ai builds ai tools now. pretty wild to think about
$100-200/month is a filter. This isn't for casual users. it's for people who can justify the cost through time saved. says a lot about where anthropic sees the value
Security concerns are valid but overblown. Yes prompt injection is real. yes regular users won't catch it. but the sandbox gives better default protection than most of us give ourselves anyway. and waiting until it's "perfectly safe" means never shipping anything
what happens next
Google and OpenAI will follow. that's just inevitable at this point. the race to own the ai coworker space is on
For us devs the interesting question isn't whether to use these tools. we already do. it's how to build things that complement them instead of competing. the wrapper-app era might be ending but the platform-extension era is just starting
Cowork is a research preview. mac only. rough edges. but it's also the most real glimpse of what ai-augmented work will feel like for normal people
Honestly it feels less like the future arriving and more like the present finally catching up :)
Sources:
- TechCrunch
- VentureBeat
- Simon Willison's First Impressions
- Zvi Mowshowitz Analysis
- Fortune
- Anthropic Official Announcement
