In a regular chat you go back and forth. In Cowork you hand Claude a job, and you can watch its progress, the files it reads, the connectors and skills it uses and the outputs it makes.
What is Claude Cowork good for?
Bigger jobs. Cowork can work with whole folders on your computer instead of a handful of attachments, so it handles a lot more data. If you've got a messy folder, give it to Cowork and ask it to figure out what's in there and build a file structure for it.
Can Claude Cowork run tasks on a schedule?
Yes. You can set a task to run every weekday at 6 a.m. or every Friday at 4, and that's the autonomous employee level. My morning brief and my weekly content runs work this way.
Is Cowork different from Claude chat?
Less than it used to be. Anthropic has been bringing chat and Cowork together, so I'd stop thinking of them as two products. Use chat for quick back and forth and Cowork when the job has several steps.