Pick up where Cowork stops.

In one line

Claude Cowork is Anthropic's agent that does work for you. Chat Claude's job was to answer questions; Cowork's job is to take a goal, work inside the folders and tools you choose, and hand the result back for review. Separate from Claude Code, which is for people who write code, it's built for everyday work with documents, spreadsheets and folders.

How it differs from chat Claude

With chat, copying the answer into a file is left to you. Cowork opens the file, writes to it, and reports "done." You can see which files it opened, which tools it used and what it chose, so you can stop it or have it redo things midway.

About the 2026 merge with chat

As of October 1, 2026, Anthropic's official page says "Claude Cowork is now just Claude," rolling Cowork out as part of Claude itself rather than a separate menu, starting with Pro and Max. The merge began in September 2026 and is still in progress, so menu locations and names may change. Check the official announcements for the latest.

What it can do, in short

• Read, create and edit files in folders you choose on your computer
• Open a dedicated browser to research and fill in forms (separate from your own browser)
• Control the screen only when needed (Computer Use)
• Run the same job on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule
• Split big jobs and work on the parts in parallel
• Fit your work with skills, connectors and plugins

Examples from the official page

Anthropic's product page lists examples built around non-engineering work. A report that gathers last week's marketing numbers every Monday morning, compares them, and saves a deck to Drive. A roll-up that combines each region's export from the month-end folder into one sheet and flags rows far from budget. A first-pass review that checks a contracts folder against your policy and writes a memo per contract with clause numbers. A read-back that goes through a quarter of deal notes and summarizes each deal's status and recurring objections. Each one is "point to a folder, state the goal," and the result comes back for review.

Terms used in this guide

Chat Claude, Cowork for doing work, and Claude Code for code are three entry points to the same Claude models. In this guide, Cowork means the feature that finishes desk work, and SIMY means the side that picks up and runs work born in meetings and chat. Using Claude itself is covered in a separate guide.

1. Install the Claude desktop app. Official downloads exist for macOS, Windows (including arm64), ChromeOS and Linux (as of October 1, 2026). Web and mobile are rolling out, with mobile in beta. Check the latest official page for Windows coverage and feature differences.
2. Log in on a paid plan. Cowork is a paid-plan feature. See "Pricing and platforms" below.
3. Open Cowork and pick a folder. Claude can only touch the folder you pick here and the tools you connect. Start with something low-risk, like a messy folder of files.
4. Say only "what." Write the goal, not the steps: "Split this folder into proposals, quotes and meeting notes, and write a how-to on naming."
5. Watch the steps and review the result. Deleting anything requires your approval.

Once you're comfortable, put weekly work on a schedule. It runs even with your laptop closed, and the results wait for you.

Writing your first instruction

• Narrow it to one folder. Not "the whole desktop," but something with visible edges, like "Sales files."
• Describe the result in one line. "Four folders: proposals, quotes, notes, other" or "one tab per region." Deciding the format up front speeds up review.
• Say what not to do. "Don't delete anything." "Don't send anything outside." Approvals exist, but writing it down adds peace of mind.
• Ask for a report. "At the end, list what you couldn't do and what needs a decision." That one line turns pending items into a list.

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Choosing a plan

For one person handing off desk work, start with Pro (about $20/month, excl. tax, as of October 2026). If you run many jobs a day or long work in parallel, Max with its higher limits is the candidate. To use it as a team and control who can touch which folders and tools, Team; for per-department permissions, spend caps and exporting activity logs, Enterprise. Limits and prices can change, so check the official pricing page for the rest.

With SIMY: SIMY itself doesn't need a paid Claude plan. With the SIMY desktop app, you can bring Claude Code chats in and run Claude Code from SIMY. Claude tokens can't be used for cloud runs; cloud runs use your ChatGPT account (Codex). For SIMY pricing, see the pricing page.

Four easy things to hand off first

• Sorting folders: group piled-up files by type and flag likely duplicates. Deletion only after approval.
• Auto-written how-tos: turn the steps it just did into an internal how-to doc.
• Excel roll-ups: combine several export files into one sheet and flag rows with big changes.
• PowerPoint decks: the same weekly report structure, refreshed with new numbers on a schedule.

Instructions you can use as is

• "Split the sales folder into proposals, quotes, meeting notes and other. Don't delete duplicates; list them."
• "Write the steps you just followed as a how-to for new hires in Word. Include where to save and naming rules."
• "Combine the four CSVs in the expenses folder into one Excel file and highlight rows that moved 10% or more from last month."
• "Every Monday at 8:00, make the weekly report in PowerPoint with last week's numbers and save it to the reports folder."

Skills, connectors and plugins

Skills give Claude business know-how like "how we write reports." Connectors link tools you already use, such as Microsoft 365, Google Drive and Slack. Plugins bundle skills, connectors and subagents into one installable package. Plugins for legal, finance, brand voice and more are available, and on Team and Enterprise admins can set up an internal marketplace.

All of these help finish the work you assigned faster and more accurately. None of them is a way for someone to pick up the follow-ups agreed in a meeting. That's SIMY's job.

Give Cowork a meeting-notes folder and ask it to "pull out decisions and follow-ups," and you'll get a clean result. Weekly reports run on a schedule, and email replies can be drafted. Up to here, Cowork does well.

What's left is the structure. After every meeting, you save the transcript, open Cowork and type the same instruction. Even on a schedule, "which meeting, which follow-up, to whom" has to be redesigned each time. Stopping email at a draft is reassuring in Codex and Cowork alike; it's not anyone's selling point.

SIMY removes the instructing step. It picks up work from meeting records and chat, learns how you finished it once, prepares it the same way next time, and lists only what needs a decision in My Actions. It's meant to run alongside Cowork, taking what Cowork finishes and moving on to what's next.

• Folder scope: Claude can touch only the folders you choose and the tools you connect. Nothing else is in reach.
• Deletion: deleting anything requires your approval.
• Checks before acting: with permission settings on, it shows its plan before important actions and waits for approval. You can stop or redirect it midway.
• Dedicated browser: web tasks run in a separate browser inside Cowork, apart from your own browser's logins and tabs.
• Team and Enterprise: admins can set per-team access, spend caps and per-department tool permissions, and send activity logs to a SIEM.

Start with a folder you can afford to mess up. Until you're comfortable, delete and send things yourself. On SIMY's side, Gmail stops at saving drafts, and Slack posts and Notion writes need approval. How we handle data is described in Security and the Privacy Policy.

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Cowork or Claude Code

Claude Code is the entry point for working with code and repositories from a terminal or editor, built for engineers. If you're a non-engineer working with documents, spreadsheets and folders, Cowork is enough. If you use both, split it as code to Claude Code, desk work to Cowork, meeting follow-ups to SIMY. SIMY finds repeat work in your Claude Code history and offers it as "Suggestions from SIMY," so routine work you did by hand in Claude Code can become a WorkFlow as is.

If your company chose Copilot Cowork

If your company standardizes on Microsoft 365 and Copilot, you may not be able to try Claude Cowork. Meeting follow-ups and chat requests still appear every week. SIMY doesn't replace Copilot; it picks up and runs work from meetings and chat, so it sits alongside Copilot Cowork. SIMY runs work with your ChatGPT (Codex) or Claude Code on your computer, separate from your Copilot license.

How to choose: Microsoft 365-centered company, Copilot Cowork; work across local folders and many tools, Claude Cowork; code, Claude Code. Whichever you choose, picking up meeting follow-ups is a separate job, and that's where SIMY layers on. Since SIMY can run work with both Codex and Claude Code, it's also a backup when one has issues or hits its limit. Check Microsoft's official guidance for Copilot Cowork's specs.