Anthropic Releases Claude Cowork For macOS

On January 12, 2026, Anthropic announced Claude Cowork, a general-purpose macOS agent that automates file management and multi-step document-processing workflows within designated local directories. The tool runs inside a Virtualization Framework VM, uses a folder-permission model, supports Agent Skills for XLSX/PPTX/DOCX/PDF formats, and can spawn parallel Claude instances; testers reported an accidental 11GB file consumption.