The "old" version of Cowork runs model inference in the cloud, executing tool calls in an Anthropic-provided VM we shipped to your computer. We added the VM for capability, safety, and security reasons - mapping in just the data you explicitly added to your session. People loved what they were able to do with Claude but didn't love the disk, battery, and performance cost of running the VM locally. Also, people didn't love that closing your laptop means the work stops.

The "new" version of Cowork runs model inference and the VM in the cloud. Each session gets its own sandbox, not sharing state with other sessions. When the VM needs something on the users' device (like a file), the desktop app is responsible for that file access tool call. [...]

We think this solves a lot of problems we've heard about (like using Cowork from a phone, keeping work running, or getting all the same power without losing battery to the VM)

— Felix Rieseberg, Anthropic, see also this help page

Tags: claude-cowork, anthropic, claude, generative-ai, ai, general-agents, llms

Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

In hopefully good news for anyone who, like me, was increasingly confused at Cowork v.s. Claude v.s. Claude Code:

Starting today, Claude Cowork and chat are merging into one Claude. Bring a quick question, or hand over a report due at noon, and Claude takes it from there, even after you’ve closed your laptop. [...]

This is rolling out to Pro and Max plans first, in the Claude app on web, desktop, and mobile over the coming weeks to existing and new users on these plans.

I guess this means Claude is becoming a general agent in its own right. Echoes of OpenAI renaming their Codex desktop app to ChatGPT a few weeks ago.

On the one hand, this saves me some work, in that I was planning to finally figure out the boundaries between Cowork and regular Claude and write a follow-up to my piece on Understanding ChatGPT Work.

I have a hunch that figuring out what this actually means in terms of features and surfaces is still going to take quite a bit of work.

Via Hacker News

Tags: ai, generative-ai, llms, anthropic, claude, general-agents