For instance I use claude code to classify my expenses (given a bank statement CSV) for VAT reporting, and fill in the spreadsheet that my accountant sends me. Or for noting down line items for invoices and then generating those invoices at the end of the month. Or even booking a tennis court at a good time given which ones are available (some of the local ones are north/south facing which is a killer in the evening). All these tasks could be done at least as well outside the terminal, but the actual capability exists - and can only exist - on my computer alone.
I hope this will interact well with CLAUDE.md and .claude/skills and so forth. I have those files and skills scattered all over my filesystem, so I only have to write the background information for things once. I especially like having claude create CLIs and skills to use those CLIs. Now I only need to know what can be done, rather than how to do it - the “how” is now “ask Claude”.
It would be nice to see Cowork support them! (Edit: I see that the article mentions you can use your existing 'connectors' - MCP servers I believe - and that it comes with some skills. I haven't got access yet so I can't say if it can also use my existing skills on my filesystem…)
(Follow-up edit: it seems that while you can mount your whole filesystem and so forth in order to use your local skills, it uses a sandboxed shell, so your local commands (for example, tennis-club-cli) aren't available. It seems like the same environment that runs Claude Code on the Web. This limits the use for the moment, in my opinion. Though it certainly makes it a lot safer...)