Live data from Hacker News

Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

claude.com

71–80 of 198 posts

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#71
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…

GPT Chat seems smarter for business questions or planning that does not require iteration or wrangling data sources.

But Work gives the model a computer instance it can use for programmatic data access, API munging, etc.

Success cases I’ve had: chat - read the reports in my Gmail and put a counter proposal together.

Work - cross reference all the options with commute time using traffic aware map data. Ground it on drop off / pick up times from each option’s stated rules and hours. Create a table with commute and idle time break downs.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#72
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.

These are modern infomercials. Concrete pains ("planning a vacation is hard!"), shallow solutions that don't stand up to real-world use, and, in the end, a promise left unfilfilled. (And a thing in your drawer that takes up space.)

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#73
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.

Chat is only tedious because it’s slow. If models responded in 300ms it would be the ideal interface.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#75

Hi, this is my team! Happy to answer any questions. There's a lot in this launch, but the core idea is to simplify the product while giving users access to more capabilities. You no longer need to know ahead of time how much work a conversation might involve. If you're at your computer, Claude can use your local files and apps. If you close your laptop, Claude can keep working on its own computer. This launch also le…

Why is Claude Code still proprietary, while Codex is Open Source? What would it take to fix that? This is a major reason to pick OAI models over Anthropic (because while you can use an open agent with any model, the AI labs charge much more for that interaction style).

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's funny to me that instead of moving existing tech to a word in word out paradigm, people are dropping millions getting the chat to work with the existing paradigm. Probably inevitable, but seems like a lot of disruption could happen there.

Text based workflows are king

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#79
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.

One thing I would like is a tree-like chat structure like reddit / HN. Many times I abandon the direction things have gone but would like to resume at some ancestor or sibling response.

Yes this would be very useful. Or at least being able to selectively compact a linear part and continue from before.

Often times I just sort of wish to undo.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#80
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

Can you elaborate? How in the world would I interface with claude other than sending it messages?
Post reply on HN