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Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

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Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#61

Post by dvt »

jonathanberger wrote: post #29
petcat wrote: post #10

Nobody really knows how to product-ize any of these LLM interfaces beyond just chat. They don't want a traditional UI with buttons and forms and labels because they want the interface to be "chat". The problem is that "chat" is tedious. And the turn-based, linear nature of the chat interaction model makes it even more tedious and unproductive.

I don't think it's that anyone wants the interface to be chat. I think it's that the underlying technology is inherently words in and words out. It's similar to how devices with capacitive screens are most naturally going to support tapping, dragging, and pinching.

My personal hot take is that the product people (engineers too probably) at these companies are just straight up lazy. Yes, a new UI paradigm is hard, but it's been painfully obvious that chat just absolutely sucks. It's also obvious that some DSL-ish thing is possible, something that just does token juggling and the end-user sees some UI behavior.

I know this all sounds abstract. I've been mulling over it for the past year and it's very hard; and LLMs are super janky and inconsistent so it's 100% not trivial. So in some sense I understand why a lazy bottom-of-the-barrel "chat interface" has become the de facto standard.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#62

Post by TutleCpt »

idle_zealot wrote: post #49
royal__ wrote: post #8

These kinds of updates always have this romantic scenario of someone having Claude develop a presentation or something on their way to work between multiple devices, which actually feels a little sad and does not align with what happens in my life at all.

This is a nightmare scenario to me. "Claude, prepare me a presentation on XYZ." I get to work, go straight to the meeting room, and pull up what it made to present. It's barely coherent nonsense. Lots of irrelevant details, buzz words, wrong charts or confusing phrasing. Obviously LLM output. I read it out. When I'm done, I get a question about one of Claude's incorrectly inferred details. The shame instantly kills m…

Why on earth would you present a presentation that you haven't reviewed ahead of time?

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#63

Post by dsign »

jeromechoo wrote: post #20
petcat wrote: post #10

Nobody really knows how to product-ize any of these LLM interfaces beyond just chat. They don't want a traditional UI with buttons and forms and labels because they want the interface to be "chat". The problem is that "chat" is tedious. And the turn-based, linear nature of the chat interaction model makes it even more tedious and unproductive.

This has been my ongoing gripe. Someone put chat in front of a transformer model. It exploded like all prior versions of “AI chat” did. Now what? The moment someone figures out a new modality for LLMs is when we’ll see the next hockey stick.

> The moment someone figures out a new modality for LLMs is when we’ll see the next hockey stick.

Honestly, that fills me with fear. LLMs exist to make money to their companies, and said companies are not gonna turn around and say, "you know what, go are going to make an android for each elderly person, that can not only help them with their medications, but that can actually make their medications, tailored to their biologies." Instead, they are going to go for the low-handing fruit of "you know Bob, the guy who makes jokes in meetings but who is grumpy about delivery timelines? Well, we are going to make an android to replace Bob. MetalBob will make even better jokes. The blue model will be able to explain in excruciating level of detail why timelines aren't reasonable. The red model will walk through the cubicles with a whip to ensure everybody keeps working all the time, and nobody goes to pee."

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#64

Post by sudo_cowsay »

kylecazar wrote: post #35
royal__ wrote: post #8

These kinds of updates always have this romantic scenario of someone having Claude develop a presentation or something on their way to work between multiple devices, which actually feels a little sad and does not align with what happens in my life at all.

"Plan a trip to Italy next month and book the flights" I see a version of that all the time and would never, ever do it.

Exactly! Imagine if it booked like a 3000 dollar 1st class flight because it thought it was providing you with "the most comfortable and hospitable experience as possible."

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#65

Post by altmanaltman »

sudo_cowsay wrote: post #59
Sherveen wrote: post #6

People keep asking for this w/ Codex, too, and I really regret that both labs seem inclined to listen. If you ask a thinking/research type question in 'Chat' versus 'Work' mode in these products -- say, something complex about politics, or do a multiturn business strategy, or want to work thru a new concept, you get very different answers. The harness, steering, etc. in the chat/reasoning products is so much better f…

The fact that people asked for it means that there is a demand for it. Maybe you aren't the target audience? One size can't fit all. People just have to adjust and go.

Yes the point is that they wouldn't have to adjust unless they are merged into one. Precisely because one size can't fit all, yet they insit on one size now.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#66

Post by tipsytoad »

kylecazar wrote: post #35
royal__ wrote: post #8

These kinds of updates always have this romantic scenario of someone having Claude develop a presentation or something on their way to work between multiple devices, which actually feels a little sad and does not align with what happens in my life at all.

"Plan a trip to Italy next month and book the flights" I see a version of that all the time and would never, ever do it.

idk I thought the same until I got personal amex support at work, now it’s my roofline on how useful/trusted an agent could be. Now I book all my travel through them, and it’s an absolute blessing

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#67

Post by dpkirchner »

jeromechoo wrote: post #20
petcat wrote: post #10

Nobody really knows how to product-ize any of these LLM interfaces beyond just chat. They don't want a traditional UI with buttons and forms and labels because they want the interface to be "chat". The problem is that "chat" is tedious. And the turn-based, linear nature of the chat interaction model makes it even more tedious and unproductive.

This has been my ongoing gripe. Someone put chat in front of a transformer model. It exploded like all prior versions of “AI chat” did. Now what? The moment someone figures out a new modality for LLMs is when we’ll see the next hockey stick.

Perhaps we could see a Yahoo Pipes style interface and feature set, handled by LLM (when simple transforms aren't an option).

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#68

Post by ceejayoz »

TutleCpt wrote: post #62
idle_zealot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nightmare scenario to me. "Claude, prepare me a presentation on XYZ." I get to work, go straight to the meeting room, and pull up what it made to present. It's barely coherent nonsense. Lots of irrelevant details, buzz words, wrong charts or confusing phrasing. Obviously LLM output. I read it out. When I'm done, I get a question about one of Claude's incorrectly inferred details. The shame instantly kills m…

Why on earth would you present a presentation that you haven't reviewed ahead of time?

I wish I knew, but I've definitely seen it happen.

"What does this bit mean?" "I dunno."

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#69

Post by KronisLV »

fidotron wrote: post #7
throwaway2027 wrote: post #3

I'm starting to explore alternative options because Claude has become an awful value proposition. Any suggestions?

I turned off Anthropic properly and switched all of that over to OpenAI yesterday. (I use other models for other things too, especially DeepSeek in Pi). Honestly aside from the voice it uses you wouldn't notice a difference. Switching costs are low, vote with your wallet.

> I turned off Anthropic properly and switched all of that over to OpenAI yesterday.

Same, just a while longer ago.

I much prefer how OpenAI models write to Anthropic's, will probably revisit Anthropic in a generation or two. Context size is more limited, but no critical forgetfulness due to compaction so far, though I also like having plan files around both for future reference and improving chances of success at long form work.

Also tried out Kimi K3, was nice but slow (and apparently routed some requests to Claude anyways), GLM 5.3 was faster and still pretty good but the token allowances were kinda limited.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#70

Post by Sn0wCoder »

Sherveen wrote: post #6

People keep asking for this w/ Codex, too, and I really regret that both labs seem inclined to listen. If you ask a thinking/research type question in 'Chat' versus 'Work' mode in these products -- say, something complex about politics, or do a multiturn business strategy, or want to work thru a new concept, you get very different answers. The harness, steering, etc. in the chat/reasoning products is so much better f…

I hope not Chat is still all you can eat and Work uses Codex tokens. I can see why they would want people to think they wanted this without thinking about how it currently works. If Chat starts eating tokens then there is not much reason to use Chat other than most people don't live in the command line like developers. Claude Chat / Cowork already eats tokens either way so not much of a change really. I have never used Work since if I want access to local files the CLI is a much better interface combined with an IDE, but can see the appeal to non-developers.
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