Anthropic's Claude Cowork agent now runs on your phone without a desktop

Anthropic has expanded Claude Cowork beyond the desktop app, allowing it to run tasks from the Claude smartphone app or web browser without requiring the desktop session to remain active. Previously, the Dispatch feature let users submit tasks from their phone, but the laptop had to be awake and the app open. Now, Cowork can operate autonomously, even after the user logs off—catching late-night messages and running scheduled jobs like pulling data from emails, Slack, meeting transcripts, and generating documents for deals.

This move is part of a broader industry shift toward always-on, semi-autonomous AI agents, sparked by the viral homebrew agent OpenClaw. Competitors like OpenAI's Codex Remote and Google's Spark have also launched similar features. Anthropic plans to roll out the revamped Cowork as a beta to Max plan subscribers ($100/month) first, then to Pro ($20/month). A usage report from Anthropic shows Cowork is most used for business process operations (data reports, checklists) and content creation (slide decks, proposals).