Claude Cowork Expands to Mobile and Web: Anthropic's Agentic AI Comes to Your Phone

Claude Cowork Anthropic's Claude Code-style agent for general knowledge work is coming to your phone. Claude Cowork launched as a desktop app in January, but starting Tuesday, it is available on web and mobile for Max subscribers. With the update, users can start a task from their desk, get status updates on their phone, and pick up the finished output later even if their laptop is closed.

The product expansion is a signal that Anthropic wants Cowork to feel less like a coding tool for dummies and more like an agentic administrative coworker: something that can work in the background, tag along across devices, and request human input when a decision pops up that only the user can make. In other words, the coding agent wars are spilling into the rest of the office.

The Shift from Chatbots to Workspace Companions

The move comes as AI firms try to push their products beyond chatbots into the everyday surfaces where work actually happens. OpenAI has made a similar move with Codex, which began as a software development tool but is increasingly being used by non-developers for reports, spreadsheets, presentations, research, data analysis, and more. For both labs, the bet is that success will depend less on who has the best chatbot and more on who owns the space where work gets done.

That push also extends to other apps. Anthropic recently launched Claude Tag, an always-on Claude that lives in Slack and acts as an AI teammate. Beyond the benefits of one specific interface, launching Cowork as a multi-platform app means that the agent can continue running tasks in the background without a device online, the company says.

What Cowork Can Do

The desktop app will remain the place for deep work, where Claude can access local files and the browser. But bringing Cowork to web and mobile means people who didn't install the app can also use it. Anthropic says chat and Cowork will be unified in web and desktop to start, with projects and artifacts living together across both.

Platform Primary Use Case: Desktop, deepDeep work, local file access, browser integration. Web- Accessible to all users, no installation required. Mobile- Status updates, task management on the go.

The "Work Around the Work"

Anthropic also released early Cowork data, which suggests the clearest use case for the tool is the "work around the work" that keeps companies functioning, handling what Anthropic calls the "tasks that are part of a broad swath of jobs, but are rarely a person's core responsibility."

The study sampled 1.2 million anonymized and aggregated Cowork sessions from more than 600,000 organizations over the last two weeks of May.

Task CategoryPercentage of UsageBusiness Process Operating33.4%Content Creation & Copywriting16.4%Software Development8.7%

Business Process Operating — the largest category at 33.4% involved pulling scattered updates into a single report, building onboarding checklists, and reconciling spreadsheets. Anthropic said the tasks are common among roles in finance, HR, and administration.

Content Creation and Copywriting — the next largest category at 16.4% involved tasks like drafts, slide decks, social posts, proposals, and other communications work usually performed by marketing and management positions.

Software Development, by comparison, only accounted for 8.7% of Cowork usage.

"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, and the kinds of tasks people are finding it most helpful for are coming into focus," Anthropic said in a statement.

Anthropic's expansion of Claude Cowork to web and mobile represents a significant shift in how AI agents are being deployed in the workplace. By moving beyond the desktop and into the everyday surfaces where work happens, Anthropic is positioning Cowork as a true administrative partner rather than just a coding tool. The early usage data suggests that the real value of these agents lies not in writing code, but in handling the "work around the work" that keeps organizations running. As AI firms continue to compete for dominance in the enterprise space, the ability to own these workflows across multiple devices will be a key differentiator.