Anthropic's Claude Cowork heads to the cloud as data shows 90% of sessions aren't for coding

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Claude Cowork is becoming a cloud-based AI helper.
• Desktop still offers the fullest Cowork experience.
• Anthropic said 90% of Cowork use is not coding.

Anthropic announced today it's bringing the agentic helper for Claude users, Claude Cowork, to the web and mobile devices. After analyzing 1.2 million Cowork sessions, Anthropic is also sharing some unexpected usage details.

Let's start with the Cowork upgrade.

The work around the work

Anthropic also introduced a new phrase to describe Cowork: the work around the work. 

The premise is that professionals have a ton of domain expertise, but a lot of their time is consumed doing administrivia tasks, like digging through emails, consolidating spreadsheets, organizing files, and whatnot. Those tasks aren't technically "the work." They're the work you do to get the work done, hence, "the work around the work."

Also: Claude Fable 5 is back, but I'm sticking with Opus 4.8 for daily work: 5 reasons why

According to the company, "It's the work around the work: rarely in anyone's job description, but a large share of everyone's week."

While some of this administrative support work does need to be done on the desktop, most of it doesn't. Last weekend, I set Cowork loose on my site to find vulnerabilities. None of that required it to run on my desktop. It could have easily run in the cloud. 

Now, it can.

Untether your tasks

According to the company, a user can start a task at a desk, check progress from a phone, and pick up finished output from any browser. It says you no longer need your laptop open to run Cowork. I normally run Cowork on my massive Mac Studio with 128GB of RAM and a 38-inch monitor, but it's the same idea. The machine could be off, and the task would still run.

"Close the laptop and head to your meeting; Claude keeps going," said Anthropic. For some reason, I keep flashing on pictures in my head of the Energizer bunny.

In fact, scheduled tasks can work entirely online as long as the task itself is online. So Cowork can sift through email threads, check transcripts, and examine news, all while you sleep. The limitation is that you have to use connected apps. Cloud Claude doesn't have access to your browser experience.

Also: I had Gemini and Claude write my email replies - but only one sounds like me

There's a mobile version of the app for Android and iOS. This serves two purposes. First, you can check status and get notifications on your phone. If Claude Cowork reaches a point where it needs permission or clarification, it'll push a notification to your phone. Drafts of messages won't be sent until you review and approve them.

That way, you're always in control of the flow, even if you're not in front of your main machine. "When Claude reaches a call only you can make, it asks, and the question reaches your phone," the company's blog post said.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of clarifying something to an AI or granting it permission from atop the porcelain throne, but the flexibility does show promise in other non-scatological situations. Don't tell me you didn't have that thought, too.

"Desktop remains the place for deep work, and it's the full Cowork experience, where Claude can also use your local files and browser. Users who couldn't install a desktop app can now use Cowork too," Anthropic said.

The web and mobile versions of Cowork are in beta and available to Max plan subscribers. The company said access will expand to more plans (the cheap seats) in the coming weeks. Doubled Cowork usage limits are extended through Aug. 5 to mark the launch.

Not just for coders anymore

Along with the new feature announcement, Anthropic offered up some very interesting statistics derived from its session logs. Anthropic said it "sampled 1.2 million anonymized and aggregated Claude Cowork sessions" from May 11 to May 31, 2026, across more than 600,000 organizations.

Also: Claude Code made an astonishing $1B in 6 months - and my own AI-coded iPhone app shows why

With all the hullabaloo about Claude Code, you might have expected that Cowork use would be dominated by coding-related tasks. But Anthropic said that more than 90% of the sampled sessions were unrelated to software development.

Image: Anthropic

A full 50% of Cowork usage can be attributed to business process and content creation. Business process and operations was the largest category at 33.4%, followed by content creation and copywriting at 16.4%.

"Our data suggests that people are using Claude Cowork to assemble and structure the information they can use to act on their expertise," Anthropic said.

Also: I tested ChatGPT vs. Claude to see which is better - and if it's worth switching

So here's the thought that's been banging around in my head ever since I learned about this announcement and started writing this piece. If I have Cowork and it runs autonomously in the cloud and on schedule, do I even need a dedicated server with OpenClaw anymore? Can't most of what I want done with OpenClaw be done with Claude and be safer and more reliable at the same time?

OpenClaw doesn't incur usage limits with on-device AI. It doesn't have a fee. But if I'm already paying for Claude Max, how far can I take it? Stay tuned. I'm sure I'll be back with some hands-on tests.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

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