Anthropic has merged Cowork, the separate space it offered for extended agentic work, into standard Claude conversations, 9to5Mac and The Terminal reported on 16 September. Claude Design has been folded in as well. Instead of asking people to pick a mode, Claude now judges for itself whether a message calls for a quick reply or a multi-step task that draws on their files and connected apps.
The reported reasoning was that users struggled to know which mode a given task belonged in. Everything Cowork offered carries over, from connectors and skills to browser abilities and recurring work, along with existing projects and tasks. Two beta apps arrived the same day, Claude Docs and Claude Slides, which export to PowerPoint or PDF, and long tasks keep running after the user closes the laptop.
Claude Pro and Claude Max get the merged experience first, and Team and Free plans follow later. Anthropic announced no change to pricing: Pro remains $20 a month and Max $100 or $200. Enterprise admins receive 30 days' notice before changes. Claude still waits to be handed a task rather than looking for work of its own accord.
When your agent work ends in research, reports or slides, Claude may do the job with no always-on agent at all. Add connectors sparingly, as each one widens what it can read.