Anthropic is bringing Claude Cowork, its AI agent that automatically completes multi-step workplace tasks, to web and mobile devices starting with Max plan subscribers. The company discovered that real-world Cowork usage focuses mainly on administrative and content work rather than software development, addressing the 'work around work' that occupies much of employees' time but rarely appears in formal job duties.
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Sign up free →What happened
Anthropic announced that Claude Cowork, an AI agent feature previously available only on desktop, will roll out to web browsers and mobile phones over the coming weeks. The rollout begins with the Max plan and will expand to other plans later.
Why it matters
Anthropic found that over 90% of actual Cowork usage is for non-software tasks—mainly business operations and content creation like reconciling quarterly expenses or generating customer materials from call transcripts. These repetitive tasks, which the company calls 'work around work,' consume significant time but are rarely formally documented in job descriptions.
What to watch
On web, Cowork sessions start from claude.ai's home screen; on mobile, from the iOS/Android Claude app's sidebar. Full desktop features require downloading the desktop app. Anthropic is extending a campaign that doubles Cowork's usage limit through August 5.
Claude Cowork was introduced as a desktop feature that lets users hand off multi-step tasks to an AI agent, which works across files, calendars, email, messaging, and web tools until completion. The new web and mobile expansion makes the tool accessible from more devices, though Anthropic maintains that desktop remains the full-featured version for sustained work. The company's own usage data reveals a meaningful gap between the tool's initial positioning—as a code-generation aid—and how customers actually deploy it. By revealing that over 90% of real-world Cowork sessions serve administrative and creative tasks outside software development, Anthropic is signaling that the business case for AI agents extends well beyond engineering workflows. These 'work around work' tasks—expense reconciliation, document synthesis, administrative coordination—consume substantial employee hours despite being invisible in formal job descriptions, suggesting a large addressable market for AI agents in business operations.
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