Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#231

Post by idle_zealot » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:41 AM UTC

jampekka wrote: post #102

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…

> It's barely coherent nonsense. Lots of irrelevant details, buzz words, wrong charts or confusing phrasing. Obviously LLM output. Plenty of that even before LLMs too though.

Defaults matter a lot. Before you had to intentionally be lazy to put together garbage and call it a day. Now your boss is telling you to use AI to "speed up." The tool you're pointed to presents like it can make the slide for you and claims to do so. Every signal is screaming that you're supposed to be a lazy fraud, and people will, on average, take the path of least resistance.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#232

Post by frnz » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 6:29 AM UTC

eieiei1 wrote: post #50

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.

It’s not surprising. Technology folks don’t really understand people and what they need. This always happens. This is why woz needed Steve. Steve Jobs is sorely missed tbh. For all the shit he got - he was a true visionary. He lived at the intersection of technology and the humanities… he kept preaching this. And now we are seeing why.

This is so true, it really struck me, thanks. For me, this is the most important post of the week. By far.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#233

Post by Kerbonut » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 6:45 AM UTC

felixrieseberg wrote: post #46

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…

Can you standardize with all of your tools on a common registry key and settings paradigm and same plugin/skills paradigm and common method for enterprise delivery? It’s a pain in the neck getting all of this set up and deployed throughout the org.

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#234

Post by GeneralMaximus » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 7:09 AM UTC

paulhebert wrote: post #174

crisnoble wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And does having an AI call the restaurant instead of you doing it sound cool to you?

I’m not the person you asked but I’m also confused by this use case. Most restaurants have a web UI which is very simple and easy to use.

Here in Bangalore, you can usually book directly from the Google Maps listing. Or sometimes click a link that will open in Swiggy/Zomato, and you just book from there.

At least in this city, reserving a table using the apps you already have on your phone is faster than using an LLM. Maybe these products are for people who know about the existence of Claude and ChatGPT but not Google Maps?

Re: Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude

#235

Post by __rito__ » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 7:10 AM UTC

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 see Work as the mode where you can generate and edit files without manual intervention.

I tell chat to recommend me some books based on some of my favourites. Chat does it. I read some of them, liked some, disliked few. I give chat that information, it recommends me based on those, now I don't know which of the entries are relevant or not.

I don't want lock-in, so I try my best to tell it to generate copy-able MD syntax that I have to manually paste to an editor.

With Work mode, I tell the model to just maintain an append only markdown file, where it writes "still recommended", "not recommended any more", etc. beside titles. It does this after each turn.

This is just an example. Work - I see it as a mode that can maintain, update, and edit a file.

It's very convenient.