Forbes January 16, 2026
Anthropic launched Cowork, bringing the autonomous capabilities of its developer-focused Claude Code tool to non-technical users through a desktop application. The research preview gives knowledge workers direct file system access for an artificial intelligence agent that can organize folders, synthesize documents and generate spreadsheets with working formulas without requiring command-line expertise.
The move positions Anthropic against Microsoft’s operating-system-level Copilot integration while testing whether mainstream users will grant file-manipulation privileges to AI systems that could misinterpret instructions.
Architecture Inherited From Terminal Tool
Cowork operates on the same Claude Agent SDK that powers Claude Code, the terminal-based coding assistant that reached 115,000 developers and processed 195 million lines of code weekly by mid-2025. The desktop version replaces command-line interaction with a graphical...
Today's Sponsors
Today's Sponsor