Anthropic's Claude Cowork can read and reorganize local files but raises questions

Anthropic's Claude Cowork, an agentic AI designed to work directly on local file systems, is available as a research preview for Mac users with Apple Silicon and on the Anthropic Max plan. ZDNET's David Gewirtz tested the app on an M4 Max Mac Studio, using copies of several folders to see how Cowork analyzes, renames and reorganizes files.

In Gewirtz's tests the app's Work in a Folder feature read documents, proposed master and subcategories, renamed generically named PDFs and reorganized hundreds of files into content-based directories. It also analyzed a folder of Home Depot credit card statements and a set of scanned PDFs.

But Cowork hit limits: it ran out of context memory multiple times, initially truncated statement dates, produced a generated Word-format report that failed to load, and sometimes showed "prompt is too long" errors that required restarting. The app lacks the source-control rollback features available in Claude Code, and Anthropic labels Cowork a "research preview." It is currently Mac-only and available to users on the Max plan, which starts at $100 per month.

Gewirtz flagged security, capacity and integration flexibility as open questions and said he will not run Cowork on his live directory structure, though he may test it on copied folders and review the results.

Key Topics

Tech, Claude Cowork, Anthropic, Max Plan, Apple Silicon, Home Depot