The desktop-only AI agent now runs cross-device and in the cloud, with usage data showing knowledge workers — not developers — are its biggest audience.
Anthropic on Tuesday expanded Claude Cowork — its AI agent for general knowledge work — to iOS, Android, and the web for the first time, while also publishing usage data showing that software development accounts for less than 9% of what people actually do with the tool. [1,2]
Until now, Cowork was only accessible through the Claude desktop app for macOS and Windows. [1] The rollout begins in beta with Max subscribers and will extend to other plans “in the coming weeks,” the company said. [1,2]
What’s new in the expansion
Three concrete capabilities come with the mobile and web launch. Sessions now sync across devices, so a task started on a laptop can be checked and retrieved from a phone or browser. [2] More significantly, Cowork can now run tasks in the background with no device online at all — users can schedule work for a specific time and Claude will execute it autonomously. [2,3] Anthropic’s announcement offers a concrete example: “Set Monday’s client prep for 6 am: Claude works through the email threads, transcripts, and recent news, builds the briefing doc, and leaves the follow-up email drafted but unsent. Review it over coffee.” [2,3]
Third, when Claude reaches a decision point that requires human judgment, it surfaces the question to the user’s phone. [2,4] “Nothing ships until you’ve reviewed and approved it,” Anthropic states. [2]
The desktop app remains the most fully featured surface, retaining local file access, browser control, and Computer Use — the capability that lets Claude click, type, and navigate directly on screen. [1,4] The web version opens Cowork to users in enterprise environments where IT departments restrict software installation. [2,4]
On web and desktop, the Chat and Cowork interfaces now share a single home screen, with projects and artifacts persisting across both modes. [1,4] Anthropic is also extending its doubled Cowork usage limits through August 5. [1,2]
Who’s actually using it — and for what
Alongside the launch, Anthropic published usage data drawn from 1.2 million anonymized Cowork sessions sampled between May 11 and May 31, across more than 600,000 organizations. [2,3]
Business process and operations — tasks like pulling scattered updates into a single report, building onboarding checklists, and reconciling spreadsheets — was the single largest category at 33.4% of sampled sessions. [2,3] Content creation and copywriting came second at 16.4%, covering drafts, slide decks, social posts, and proposals. [2,3] Together, those two categories account for roughly half of all Cowork usage. [2,4]
Software development, by contrast, accounted for just 8.7% of sessions. [2,3] DevOps and infrastructure followed at 7%, research and intelligence at 6.4%, and data analysis at 5.8%. [2]
Anthropic describes the dominant use cases as “the work around the work” — tasks that span nearly every role but rarely appear in anyone’s core job description. [2,3] “While coding is still — understandably — one of the uses of AI that gets the most attention, the use of AI for everyday business work is on the rise,” the company said. [3]
Anthropic is transparent about the data’s limits: the sample is rate-capped rather than proportional to total traffic, meaning peak-hour usage is somewhat underrepresented, and roughly 5% of sessions involved personal rather than work use. [2] The company also noted that its labeling pipeline changed around May 11, which is why the analysis window starts on that date. [2]
Broader context: security concerns and competitive moves
The expansion arrives against a backdrop of unresolved security questions. On July 1, security firm Armadin — led by Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia — published research describing what it called a full sandbox escape in Claude Cowork on Windows, involving DLL sideloading against the Claude desktop executable to gain trusted access to Cowork’s virtual machine service, according to VentureBeat’s reporting. [2] Anthropic responded that the vulnerability did not qualify as a security issue because exploiting it requires an attacker to already have local code execution on the host machine. [2] The web and mobile versions run tasks server-side rather than in a local virtual machine, which removes that specific attack surface but introduces different questions around data handling for scheduled background tasks. [2]
Cowork launched in January alongside an explicit warning from Anthropic about prompt injection risks, with the company noting at the time: “These risks aren’t new with Cowork, but it might be the first time you’re using a more advanced tool that moves beyond a simple conversation.” [2]
On the competitive side, TechCrunch noted that OpenAI has made a similar push with Codex, which began as a software development tool but is increasingly being used by non-developers for reports, spreadsheets, and research. [3] The Decoder observed that Anthropic appears headed toward merging Chat and Cowork into a single product, much as OpenAI plans to do with Codex and ChatGPT. [4]
Cowork runs on Claude Sonnet 5, a model Anthropic launched last week at introductory pricing of $2 per million input tokens through August 31, before rising to $3 per million input tokens. [2]
Sources
- The Verge — Anthropic is launching Claude Cowork on mobile and web
- VentureBeat — Anthropic brings Claude Cowork to mobile and web as usage data shows most users aren’t coding
- TechCrunch — Claude Cowork expands to mobile and web
- The Decoder — Anthropic's Claude Cowork AI agent is now available on mobile and web
This article was drafted with AI from the cited sources and checked against them before publication. Spot an error? Let us know.
