Anthropic discontinues separate Cowork: Claude now merges chat and tasks

The end of confusion in Anthropic's products

According to the announcement, starting today, the specialized Claude Cowork tool is merging with the main chat interface. Users no longer need to decide whether to open a standard chat for a quick question or Cowork for a longer task. The system will now take control of choosing the mode. Whether it's a quick query or handing over a report due at noon, Claude handles it in one window, even after the user closes their laptop.

Cognitive load for users disappears

Combining both tools makes sense for daily work. Splitting between a chat and a long-running task required the user to think ahead about how complex the model's work would be. Now that barrier falls. Users with Pro and Max subscriptions will receive the update in the coming weeks.

Different modes still do different things in the background

According to developer feedback, while the separate UI is disappearing, the models continue to operate with different system prompts in the background. If you ask a complex question, you get a different type of answer than in a normal conversation. While this hides complexity from the average user, it removes the ability for advanced users to force exactly the mode they need for a given task.

The quality of judgment will determine if it's a step forward

The success of this integration will depend on how well Claude can independently recognize when to just answer quickly and when to trigger a deeper analytical process. If it switches modes poorly, it will mean a degraded user experience.

Lilith's verdict

Anthropic is just cleaning up its interface to stop scaring average users. For developers, however, it's a loss of control, because a black box now decides for them what speed the model should switch to.