Claude and Chrome: Cowork Revolutionizes Skills Integration

Claude and Chrome: Cowork Revolutionizes Skill Integration

Unveiled in August 2025 by Anthropic, the Claude extension in Chrome is today stepping out of its isolated tool status. In a blog post, the company explains that it has transformed the sidebar into a connected Cowork session with the rest of the Claude applications.

A Single Session Between Chrome and Claude Applications

The Claude sidebar in Chrome becomes a Claude Cowork session. Conversations open in the browser integrate account history, and the skills and connectors already configured work without additional setup. A task started in one tab can also be completed on the desktop application, on the web, or on mobile. Until now, the two environments remained separate, with the context and exchanges in the sidebar isolated from the rest of the ecosystem.

As a reminder, the extension can see the displayed page and act within it. Claude clicks on links, enters text, navigates between pages, and fills out forms, relying on the tabs already open in the browser. Anthropic specifically aims at tools lacking connectors, such as:

• internal dashboards
• legacy systems
• supplier portals

The example provided by the company starts with a budget tracking spreadsheet. Claude opens the portals of several suppliers, retrieves the amounts and dates of each invoice, and then constructs the file. The session can then be resumed on the desktop application to add documents stored on the computer or to import the previous month's budget and inquire about what has changed. This is the principle of remote Cowork sessions, now extended to the browser.

Unconcealed Risks and New Safeguards

Anthropic does not hide the main risk: prompt injection. Instructions hidden in a webpage, email, or document can "redirect the agent to actions that no one requested," without the user seeing them occur.

An additional control now focuses on Claude's actions: with automatic approval, the agent proceeds through steps without requesting permission each time. Before any consequential action, such as sending a form, dispatching a message, or downloading a file, a separate verification compares the action to the initial request and blocks anything that does not match. Anthropic sees this as a way to "reduce interruptions without sacrificing oversight."

Certain operations still require validation, particularly a purchase or sharing personal data. The company specifies that these measures reduce risk without eliminating it, as prompt injection remains "a moving target," and recommends starting with "trusted sites."

Plans Affected by the New Sidebar

The new sidebar is now accessible on the Max and Team plans. Deployment will continue to Pro subscribers in the coming weeks. On Enterprise plans, Claude in Chrome is disabled by default; administrators can enable it and restrict its use to a list of approved domains. The extension is installed from the Chrome Web Store and does not work with other browsers or on mobile.