Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work • Hacker News Board

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#431

Post by darkwater » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 8:38 AM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #136

antinomicus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic of the discussion is something that parents, grandmas, and non technical colleagues would realistically be able to use.

A "revert filesystem state to x time" button doesn't seem that hard to use. I'm imagining this as a potential near-term future product implementation, not a home-brewed DIY solution.

A filesystemt state in time is VERY complicated to use, if you are reverting the whole filesystem. A granular per-file revert should not be that complicated, but it needs to be surfaced easily in the UI and people need to know aout it (in the case of Cowork I would expect the agent to use it as part of its job, so transparent to the user)

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#432

Post by YetAnotherNick » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 8:40 AM UTC

bdangubic wrote: post #349

TeMPOraL wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paranoia is justified if it actually serves some purpose. Staying paralyzed and not doing anything because Someone Is Reading Your Data is not serving much of anything. Hint: those Someones have better things to do. LLM vendors really don't care about your bank statements, and if they were ever in a position to look, they'd prefer not to have them, as it just creates legal and reputational risks for them.

> as it just creates legal and reputational risks for them. Unfortunately I laughed reading this as there is never neither reputation nor legal consequences in the US of A. They can leak your entire life into my console including every account and every password you have and all PII of your entire family and literally nothing would happen… everything is stored somewhere and eventually will be used when “growth” is ne…

There obviously is reputation and legal consequences. You can get fined for billions for a far more indirect privacy violation that what you are describing. If any big company ever does that, I won't be touching it with a 10 foot pole. And no I don't believe using data for showing me ad is on the same level of privacy violation.

[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#433

Post by aroman » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #356

xlbuttplug2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can and most likely will release something that vaporises the thin moat you have built around their product. As they should if they're doing most of the heavy lifting. And it's not just LLM adjacent startups at risk. LLMs have enabled any random person with a claude code subscription to pole vault over your drying up moat over the course of a weekend.

LLMs by their very nature subsume software products (and services). LLM vendors are actually quite restrained - the models are close to being able to destroy the entire software industry (and I believe they will, eventually). However, at the moment, it's much more convenient to let the status quo continue, and just milk the entire industry via paid APIs and subscriptions, rather than compete with it across the board.…

> the models are close to being able to destroy the entire software industry

Are you saying this based on some insider knowledge of models being dramatically more capable internally, yet deliberately nerfed in their commercialized versions? Because I use the publicly available paid SOTA models every day and I certainly do not get the sense that their impact on the software industry is being restrained by deliberate choice but rather as a consequence of the limitations of the technology...

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#434

Post by Helmut10001 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 8:52 AM UTC

jryio wrote: post #36

It's so important to remember that unlike code which can be reverted - most file system and application operations cannot. There's no sandboxing snapshot in revision history, rollbacks, or anything. I expect to see many stories from parents, non-technical colleagues, and students who irreparably ruined their computer. Edit: most comments are focused on pointing out that version control & file system snapshot exists:…

I would never use what is proposed by OP. But, in any case, Linux on ZFS that is automatically snapshotted every minute might be (part of) a solution to this dilemma.

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#435

Post by aroman » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 8:52 AM UTC

ossa-ma wrote: post #60

Every startup is at the mercy of the big 3 (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google). They can and most likely will release something that vaporises the thin moat you have built around their product. This feels like the first time in tech where there are more startups/products being subsumed (agar.io style) than being created.

I think that feeling is what you get when you read too much Hacker News :) There are, in fact, more startups being created now than ever. And I promise you, people said the same thing about going up against IBM back in the day...

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#436

Post by big-chungus4 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 8:52 AM UTC

jryio wrote: post #36

It's so important to remember that unlike code which can be reverted - most file system and application operations cannot. There's no sandboxing snapshot in revision history, rollbacks, or anything. I expect to see many stories from parents, non-technical colleagues, and students who irreparably ruined their computer. Edit: most comments are focused on pointing out that version control & file system snapshot exists:…

A human can also accidentally delete or mess up some files. The question is whether Claude Cowork is more prone to it.

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#437

Post by intended » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 8:56 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #342

heliumtera wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a couple of posts here on hacker news praising agents because, it seems, they are really good at being a sysadmin. You don't need to be a non-technical user to be utterly fucked by AI.

Theoretically, the power drill you're using can spontaneously explode, too. It's very unlikely, but possible - and then it's much more likely you'll hurt yourself or destroy your work if you aren't being careful and didn't set your work environment right. The key for using AI for sysadmin is the same as with operating a power drill: pay at least minimum attention, and arrange things so in the event of a problem, you…

If a power tool blows up regularly, they get sued or there is a recall.

We have far more serious rules at play for harm when it comes to physical goods which we have experience with, than generative tools.

There is no reason generative tools should not be governed by similar rules.

I suspect people at anthropic would agree with this, because it would also ensure incentives are similar for all major GenAi purveyors.

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#438

Post by pikseladam » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 8:56 AM UTC

felixrieseberg wrote: post #6

Hi, Felix from the team here, this is my product - let us know what you think. We're on purpose releasing this very early, we expect to rapidly iterate on it. (We're also battling an unrelated Opus 4.5 inference incident right now, so you might not see Cowork in your client right away.)

Do you expect more token usage with it or will Anthropic change the limits of user token limit in the future?

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#439

Post by deanc » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 9:03 AM UTC

scottyah wrote: post #260

falloutx wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from experience the support is mostly automated it seems and it takes 2 weeks to reach a real human (could be more now). Vast majority of reddit threads also say similar timelines.

Many devs and PMs are very receptive on X

Tried two so far, and now given up. I mean it's not always their responsibility to respond to everyone's gripes and unfortunately this is a legal issue so it's probably not wise for them to comment although getting an official response to this would be nice.

Re: Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work

#440

Post by _pdp_ » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 9:10 AM UTC

Yah I wouldn't.

In my opinion, these things are better run the cloud to ensure you have a properly sandboxed, recoverable environment.

At this point, I am convinced that almost anyone heavily relaying on desktop chat application has far too many credentials scattered on the file system ready to be grabbed and exploited.