Anthropic Merges Claude Chat and Cowork, Launches Docs and Slides

The unified entry is being rolled out in batches. Pro and Max users are getting it first, with Team and Free users to follow. Claude Docs, Claude Slides and Claude Design in the conversation interface are in beta and available only to paid subscribers; Enterprise customers need an administrator to enable them.

Previously, Chat and Cowork were separate. Chat handled common AI question-and-answer tasks, while Cowork focused on deep collaboration. Cowork was incubated from Claude Code in January this year and positioned as 'Claude Code for the rest of your work,' bringing coding-agent capabilities to ordinary office scenarios for non-developers. Four engineers built it in 10 days, and most of the code was written by Claude Code itself, according to Anthropic.

Anthropic said many users often did not know which interface a task should go into, and context accumulated in one product did not always carry over smoothly to the other.

After the merger, chat, Cowork and Artifacts appear in the same window. Users describe what they want to accomplish, and Claude decides whether to answer directly or use more complex capabilities. In an example provided by Anthropic, a user could ask Claude before leaving home to pull last week's business data, identify projects that are behind schedule, write a report in the team's usual format and compress the highlights into a five-page management presentation. If information is insufficient, Claude asks follow-up questions; if the task is clear, it can continue working in the cloud. Users can close their laptop and check progress later on a phone. Because the report and slides come from the same conversation, there is no need to copy document content into another AI for it to understand again. Recurring work can be set as a scheduled task.

Claude Docs lets users work with Claude on documents, edit paragraphs themselves, or select content to ask questions, comment on and adjust. Claude Slides generates, edits and presents slides. Finished content can be played inside Claude or downloaded as PowerPoint or PDF. Documents, slides and Claude Design work can generate a share link that can be opened and edited on a phone. Users can drag elements directly or ask Claude to make changes in natural language. The standalone Claude Design entry remains available.

Anthropic is not the only company pushing AI into office work. OpenAI has taken a 'super app' route, aiming to turn ChatGPT into a Super App. In July this year, OpenAI merged Codex into the new ChatGPT desktop client and launched ChatGPT Work, which can carry out long tasks across files and applications. The previously separate Atlas browser no longer exists as a standalone product, and its browsing capabilities have been folded into ChatGPT. Google has taken a simpler path because it already sells office software: it has deeply embedded Gemini in Gmail, Docs and Workspace, using existing office scenarios to drive AI adoption. Anthropic is rebuilding office software from AI, making Claude the single entry point in what the industry calls an 'AI-native' approach.

An overseas media outlet commented, 'I hope OpenAI also learns from this and fixes ChatGPT's chaotic cross-platform interface.' The report also said the suite resembles Chinese products such as Coze Space and Feishu aily, and that China may have launched AI-native office suites half a year to a year earlier than Silicon Valley.