A deep dive into the product decisions behind Claude Cowork.
Canonical link: https://karozieminski.substack.com/p/claude-cowork-anthropic-product-deep-dive
User Behavior That Started Everything
When users bend a tool into something it was never meant to be, they're telling you what problem they're really trying to solve.
- When they use ChatGPT as a therapist → they want a way to think out loud without being judged
- When they use a calendar as a calorie tracker → they want to see the rhythm of eating across a week
- When they use a chair as a clothes drop zone → they want a temporary state between clean and dirty
Boris Cherny, Anthropic engineer, documented the pattern for Claude Code:
Since we launched Claude Code, we saw people using it for all sorts of non-coding work: conducting vacation research, creating slide presentations, organizing emails, cancelling subscriptions, retrieving wedding photos from hard drives, tracking plant growth, and controlling ovens.
Most product teams would see this data and panic.
- That's off-label use!
- Let's write a blog post clarifying intended use cases.
- Let's steer them back to the core value prop.
And while I'm still digesting the oven control use case, Anthropic did something different.
They recognized that users understood their product's real value better than they did.
Claude Code's power was never about coding. It was about agency and automation. The ability to execute real tasks on your computer without having to do it manually.
So instead of fighting the behavior, they removed the friction:
- They stripped out the terminal interface.
- They simplified the sandbox setup.
- They gave it a name that doesn't scream "not for you" to non-developers.
Ten days later, Cowork shipped.
The Mechanics Are Straightforward
You give Claude access to a folder on your computer. You tell it what you want done in plain language. It reads, edits, and creates files in that folder. No terminal. No command line. No coding knowledge required.
- Turn a pile of receipt screenshots into a formatted expense spreadsheet
- Organize a chaotic downloads folder by sorting and intelligently renaming files
- Draft a report from scattered notes across multiple documents
- Create presentations with proper formatting from meeting recordings
Unlike chat interfaces where you get suggestions, Cowork executes. You queue tasks. Claude processes them in parallel. It loops back when it needs clarification.
Anthropic describes the experience as feeling "less like back-and-forth communication and more like leaving messages for a colleague."
Hence the name.
If You Still Doubt AI-Assisted Coding
Here's the part that should make product leaders sit up.
According to reports from Anthropic's launch livestream, the team built Cowork in approximately a week and a half. Using Claude Code itself.
An AI coding agent built its own non-technical sibling. And it shipped to production. Can we agree that AI-assisted development isn't theoretical anymore?
⸻
Want to read the rest? The full post is here → Read on Substack
Top comments (0)