Claude Cowork lets you start desktop tasks from your phone, with limits

In short: Anthropic is moving toward phone-controlled AI “agents”, and Claude Cowork now lets your phone trigger tasks on your desktop, but it stops if the computer sleeps.

What's going on

Anthropic has added features in Claude Cowork that let you send a task from your smartphone and have Claude carry it out on your desktop computer. Think of the phone as the remote control and the computer as the TV, the work happens on the computer, and you steer it from your phone.

This is powered by something Anthropic calls Dispatch. It links the Claude mobile app and the Claude Desktop app, so you can keep one ongoing chat thread across devices. That means Claude can remember earlier instructions in the same thread, so you do not need to repeat your project details every time.

Claude’s desktop “agent” (an agent is software that can take steps for you, like opening apps and clicking around) can work with web pages, apps on your computer, and local files and folders. Anthropic says this is meant for knowledge work, like handling multi-step office tasks, while the human stays in charge of important decisions.

There is an important limit. Claude Cowork does not keep working if your laptop lid is closed and that puts the machine to sleep, or if you quit the Claude Desktop app. Anthropic’s own documentation says the computer must be awake and the desktop app must stay open, or Claude cannot continue.

What to watch

More companies are building AI tools you can manage from your phone while the real work runs elsewhere, either on your own computer or in the cloud (meaning on a company’s computers over the internet). The next practical question is whether these tools can keep running reliably when your personal computer is offline or asleep, without forcing people to leave a laptop awake for hours.

Source: Wired