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Starting 11/16/26
Anthropic is merging Claude Chat and Claude Cowork into a single experience. Instead of choosing “Chat” or “Cowork” before you start, you just ask Claude for what you need in one conversation. Claude decides which tools to use. It can answer a quick question or take on larger work, such as research, reports, spreadsheets, and presentations, and hand it back as files you can edit.
Anything you could previously do only in Cowork is now available from any conversation.
The new experience is rolling out gradually. On enterprise plans like UT Dallas’s, it appears once the Chat and Cowork unified setting is turned on for the organization.
- You don’t need to do anything to enable it.
- Your chats, tasks, projects, and settings move with you automatically.
- Once your account has the new experience, you can’t switch back to separate Chat and Cowork options.
- Some newer features Anthropic lists for this experience are in beta (for example, Claude Design, Claude Slides, Claude Docs, and computer use).
How Do I Know If I Have It?
Look at the message box. If it still shows separate Chat and Cowork options, you don’t have the new experience yet. Keep using Chat and Cowork as usual until it arrives.
Hand Claude a Whole Task
Describe the outcome you want. Claude works through the steps itself, such as searching the web, reading your files, running code, and assembling the results. A quick question still gets a quick answer, and you can have several tasks running at once.
- Try: “Go through these five interview notes and pull out the top themes, with a quote for each.”
Step Away While Claude Works
Longer tasks keep running in the cloud even if you close your laptop or leave the page. The result will be waiting in the conversation when you come back. Tasks that use files or apps on your computer need the Claude Desktop App open.
Get Finished Files Back
Claude can create Word documents, spreadsheets with working formulas, and PowerPoint presentations. Download them or ask Claude to keep refining them.
- Try: “Turn this analysis into a 10-slide deck I can present on Monday.”
Use Your Connected Apps
Apps you’ve connected (such as Google Drive, Gmail, or Microsoft 365) are available while Claude works on a task. Connect apps in Customize > Connectors.
- Try: “Find last quarter’s report in my Drive and summarize what changed since.”
Work With Your Computer and the Web
- Files and Folders: In the Claude Desktop App, give Claude access to a folder so it can read, organize, and create files there.
- Browsing: Claude can open sites, read pages, click, and fill in forms using the browser built into the desktop app or your own Chrome through Claude in Chrome.
Claude can only reach your local files and the built-in browser while the Claude Desktop App is open. By default, it asks before permanently deleting files.
Schedule Recurring Work
Ask Claude to run a task on a schedule, such as a weekly inbox summary. Scheduled tasks can run in the cloud, so they continue when your computer is off.
Check in From Your Phone
Tasks you start at your desk show up in the Claude mobile app, so you can check progress, answer Claude’s questions, and redirect the work from anywhere.
Skills and Plugins
Skills and plugins work in every conversation. See the UTD – Claude Skills guide for how to add skills.
A permission setting in the message box controls how independently Claude works:
- Auto: Claude keeps working without stopping to ask about each step. Automated safety checks run before it acts.
- Manual (default on Enterprise plans): Claude asks before taking actions, and you approve or deny each one.
You can change this setting at any time, and you can stop or redirect Claude while it works. For anything with real consequences, such as sending messages or changing important files, stay close and review what Claude does.
- Cowork Tasks: Now listed with your chats in Recents.
- Global Instructions: The Cowork Global instructions setting is now part of Instructions for Claude in Settings > Your Claude (or Settings > Account in the older layout). Check that your instructions are still what you want.
- Web Search: There is no longer a web search toggle. Claude searches the web when it helps.
- Research: Type /deep-research, or click the + Plus Sign button below the message box and choose Research.
- Files: Files Claude creates appear alongside the conversation. In the desktop app, the folder Cowork saved its work to is still available under Storage folder in Settings. Folders you gave Cowork access to are listed under Trusted folders.
- Model Picker and Code Tab: Unchanged.
Your existing Cowork tasks, projects, connectors, skills, artifacts, and files carry over. Older Cowork tasks open as they did before, so you can continue them. Memory from your chats is used in the tasks Claude works on for you. Memory from Cowork tasks that ran only on your computer stays with those tasks.
- Add from GitHub isn’t supported.
- Branching a conversation from an earlier point isn’t available.
- Incognito chats still work but open in the previous experience, so Claude can’t create files or run code in them.
- Search doesn’t include older Cowork tasks. You can still find them by name in Recents.
- Dispatch isn’t available to new users. Existing Dispatch users can keep using it for now.
Everything you do with Claude counts toward your usage limits. Longer tasks that search the web, run code, or create files generally use more than a quick question. Check your current usage in Settings > Usage, or see How to Check Your Claude Usage- Article | Atlas.
Describe what you need the way you’d brief a colleague. Include:
- Your Desired Outcome: For example, “a one-page summary” or “a spreadsheet with a tab for each region.”
- The Format: A Word document, a slide deck, or a message you can paste into email.
- The Inputs: The files, links, or apps Claude should work from.
Not sure where to start? Ask Claude what it can help with.
Source: Claude Cowork and Chat Are One Claude (Claude Help Center) | Claude Support