Claude CoWork: When it connects to your world | Post 4 of 6

CoWork can connect to your world via connectors; this is not new, although CoWork has added one interesting layer - connections to your local machine like file access, iMessage, Spotify and more. And importantly, it can control a web browser.

Why do we care? This is how CoWork gets the context needed to do real work. It can read your emails and plan your week. It can look up project status in Monday.com and post an update on Slack. It can chase John (again) to update his project status by sending him an email if he is more than 3 days late.

Think of connectors as the hands and eyes of Agentic AI: it can see information and (if you let it), it can also make changes.

To be fair, CoWork doesn't materially change this domain (connectors came out in ChatGPT mid-2025), but they are handled thoughtfully and are easy to authenticate.

In a previous post I spoke about "skills" which are a way to capture your experience in performing a specific task. CoWork allows you to combine connectors and skills into a "plugin" that is shareable - so you could build up standard tools for a larger team and get a bunch of consistency gains.

A note on controlling the browser: this is surprisingly useful. CoWork can use your Chrome profile to do things online. One example is weekly meal plans, and having CoWork think of meals, then actually order the groceries by browsing Sainsburys and putting them in a basket.

• In this series I am working through my own experiences with Claude CoWork: why it feels so different in my daily work and what about it is so unique.
• CoWork is the first of probably many such Agentic AI tools, and as the saying goes: this is the worst they will ever be.