Anthropic's Claude Cowork Expands to Mobile and Web

Claude Cowork Invites Itself to Mobile and Web

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude Code agent, has announced that its tool Claude Cowork, designed for general knowledge work, is now available on mobile and web platforms. Initially launched in January as a desktop application, Claude Cowork is now expanding to include Max subscribers, allowing them to start a task on a computer, receive updates on their phone, and retrieve the final result later.

This evolution marks Anthropic's intention to reposition Cowork not just as a simple coding tool, but as a true administrative assistant. The idea is to enable Cowork to operate in the background, tracking the user across different devices and prompting their intervention only when necessary for human decisions. In other words, the wars of coding agents are extending to the rest of the office.

A Trend Towards Integration of AI Agents

Anthropic's initiative is part of a broader trend where artificial intelligence companies are seeking to integrate their products into everyday work environments. OpenAI, for example, has already expanded the use of its Codex tool, initially intended for software development, to include various tasks such as creating reports, spreadsheets, presentations, as well as conducting research and data analysis.

For these companies, the challenge is to claim workspace rather than focusing solely on chatbot performance. Success will depend on their ability to integrate into existing work processes.

Cross-Platform Features

The expansion of Cowork as a cross-platform application means that users can benefit from its features without needing to keep a device online at all times. For instance, Claude can prepare a briefing for a meeting by browsing emails and news while drafting a follow-up email that awaits the user's approval. Anthropic illustrates this with an example: “Prepare Monday's client for 6 AM: Claude goes through email threads, transcripts, and recent news, builds the briefing document, and leaves the follow-up email drafted but unsent. Review it over coffee.”

While the desktop application remains essential for more complex tasks requiring access to local files, availability on web and mobile allows a broader audience to access Cowork. Anthropic plans to unify chat and Cowork features across these platforms to provide a consistent experience, with projects and artifacts coexisting on both platforms.

Claude Tag and Usage Analysis of Cowork

In addition to Cowork, Anthropic recently launched Claude Tag, an always-active Claude that lives in Slack and acts as an AI teammate. This feature allows for continuous interaction with users.

Anthropic has also released preliminary data on Cowork usage, revealing that the tool is primarily used for "work around work." A study sampled 1.2 million anonymized and aggregated Cowork sessions from over 600,000 organizations during the last two weeks of May.

The most significant category, representing 33.4% of uses, pertains to leveraging business processes, such as consolidating updates into reports or creating checklists. These tasks are common in finance, human resources, and administration sectors.

Content creation and writing, which include drafting, presentations, and social media posts, account for 16.4% of uses, primarily by marketing and management professionals. In comparison, software development constitutes only 8.7% of Cowork usage.

Anthropic emphasizes that while coding attracts a lot of attention, the use of AI for everyday business tasks is rapidly expanding. The company hopes that this data will serve as a reference for those looking to integrate AI products into their daily work, showing where added value is concentrated.