Claude can control a user's computer — clicking buttons, typing text, opening files, and navigating applications — to complete multi-step tasks on their behalf. A product called Claude Cowork, launched in January 2026, brings this capability to non-technical workers who assign tasks in plain language and let Claude work through them automatically.

Anthropic's Computer Use feature launched as an API-only beta in October 2024, making Claude the first frontier AI model to offer direct computer interaction at scale. Claude Cowork followed in January 2026 as a desktop application aimed at knowledge workers rather than software developers. Anthropic acquired computer vision company Vercept in February 2026 to advance these capabilities. Claude's score on the OSWorld benchmark — which measures an AI's ability to complete real tasks on a computer — improved from below 15% in late 2024 to 72.5% with the Claude Sonnet 4.6 model, approaching human-level performance on that test. Enterprise software stocks fell significantly following the Cowork announcement as investors anticipated automation of knowledge work.