Anthropic says its buzzy new Claude Cowork tool was mostly built by AI — in less than 2 weeks

• Anthropic employees used Claude to build Cowork, its new agentic tool launched this week.
• The AI startup said that it saw a number of customers were using Claude Code for non-coding tasks, inspiring Cowork.
• The new tool, which is in preview, has generated buzz in the AI community.

Anthropic's new working agent was largely built by Claude itself — the latest example of AI coding tools speeding up product development.

On Monday, Anthropic announced the release of Cowork, a "more approachable" AI tool accompanying Claude Code that's geared toward fulfilling users' requests that are unrelated to programming. Users grant the agentic AI tool access to specific files on their computer and prompt it to complete tasks.

Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, said that Anthropic's AI coded "pretty much all" of Cowork.

"@claudeai wrote Cowork," Product Manager Felix Rieseberg wrote on X. "Us humans meet in-person to discuss foundational architectural and product decisions, but all of us devs manage anywhere between 3 to 8 Claude instances implementing features, fixing bugs, or researching potential solutions."

As a result, Rieseberg said the first edition of Cowork came together quickly.

"This is the product that my team has built here, we sprinted at this for the last week and a half," he said during a livestream with Dan Shipper.

Over the holidays, Rieseberg said that Anthropic saw its customers using Claude for an increasing number of non-coding-related tasks.

"This sort of like the research preview, very early Alpha, a lot of rough edges, as you've already seen, right?" he said.

Cowork is initially available to Claude Max subscribers on the Mac app.

The launch has made a splash in the tech world, with many online users praising the product and its accessibility.

"I think that's a really smart product," Datasette co-creator Simon Willison wrote in a blog about his experience. "Claude Code has an enormous amount of value that hasn't yet been unlocked for a general audience, and this seems like a pragmatic approach."

"This is big," Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian wrote on X.

Because granting an AI agent access and the ability to take action on specific computer files comes with risk, Anthropic cautions that Cowork users should be careful.

"By default, the main thing to know is that Claude can take potentially destructive actions (such as deleting local files) if it's instructed to," the company said. "Since there's always some chance that Claude might misinterpret your instructions, you should give Claude very clear guidance around things like this. "

The latest in a flurry of AI announcements

AI companies wasted no time in launching new offerings and partnerships to kick off the new year.

On Sunday, Anthropic announced Claude for Healthcare, a major addition to its healthcare and life sciences offerings. Its release came on the heels of rival OpenAI signaling its investment in the healthcare space with ChatGPT Health.

Amid AI bubble chatter and scrutiny on the increasing AI investments made by tech companies, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has argued that Anthropic has built a more sustainable business model that allowed it to make more educated bets on its future build-out. While he did not name OpenAI or CEO Sam Altman directly, he made some thinly veiled criticisms of his former company throughout the event.

"I think because we focus on enterprise, I think we have a better business model," Amodei said at The New York Times' Dealbook Summit. "I think we have better margins. I think we're being responsible about it."

Google, which some experts saw as overtaking OpenAI at the end of 2025, announced a major deal with Apple to have Gemini power Siri's artificial intelligence capabilities.