Built-in browser reaches Cowork on Pro, Max and Team

Anthropic has built a web browser into Cowork, the agent that runs inside the Claude desktop app, so the agent can work with web pages without leaving the app. The rollout runs over the coming week, according to the August 26 announcement relayed on Threads.

At a glance

• The browser sits inside the Claude desktop app rather than a separate window, giving the Cowork agent a way to reach web pages as part of the tasks it runs.
• Access covers Pro, Max and Team plans across macOS, Windows and Linux, with the Linux version of the desktop app still carrying beta status, according to Anthropic's announcement.
• The browser follows a memory change that carries what Claude knows about a user from chat conversations into Cowork tasks, keeping context across the two parts of the app.

An agent that cannot reach the web is limited to what a user pastes into it, so a browser inside the same window changes what Cowork can be asked to do. Anthropic is also putting the feature in front of three paid tiers at once, which reads as a push to move Cowork out of its narrow preview audience and into ordinary paid use. For practitioners comparing agent stacks across vendors, the relevant detail is where the browsing happens: inside the vendor's own client, under its own plan tiers.

The rollout covers the Pro, Max and Team plans and reaches the Claude desktop app on macOS, Windows and Linux, with the Linux app carrying beta status. Anthropic describes the process as running over the coming week rather than a single switch flipped for all accounts on one day.

Cowork is available as a research preview for Claude Max subscribers in the macOS app, according to Threads. The browser is the second capability change reported for the agent, after memory carried over from chat conversations into the tasks the agent runs on a user's behalf.

The memory change is the other recent addition to the agent. What Claude has stored about a user in chat conversations now travels into Cowork, so a task the agent runs draws on the same context as an ordinary conversation in the app.

Beta status and the preview label

The announcement does not specify a single switch-on date inside the coming week, when the Linux desktop app leaves beta, or whether the built-in browser reaches free accounts. It also leaves open whether Cowork itself moves off the research preview label as the browser spreads to Pro and Team users on Windows and Linux.