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<\/a>Business processes and operations make up the largest share of all Claude Cowork sessions at 33.4%, followed by content creation and copywriting at 16.4%. The data shows AI is used most often for structuring and communication tasks in knowledge work. | Image: Anthropic<\/p>\nAnthropic describes these activities as “connective in nature.” Spreadsheets pull scattered data into one place, slide decks translate a decision for audiences with varying levels of background knowledge, and onboarding checklists give new hires access to an organization’s institutional knowledge.<\/p>\n
The remaining categories are much smaller. Software development accounts for 8.7 percent, DevOps and infrastructure for 7 percent, research for 6.4 percent, data analysis for 5.8 percent, document processing for 4.1 percent, and sales operations for 4 percent. Personal assistance sits at 3.8 percent, education at 2.4 percent, and meeting analysis at 1.8 percent.<\/p>\n
Cowork handles the peripheral stuff while Claude Code does the technical work<\/p>\n
The low share of coding confirms Anthropic’s thesis that the interface plays a major role in how people adopt AI models. Developers still use Claude Code to build, debug, and ship software, according to Anthropic. In Cowork, they handle the communication tasks that surround their work instead.<\/p>\n
This pattern tracks with experience. After Claude Code launched in 2025, a surprisingly large number of non-technical users showed up in the terminal, organizing folders, removing duplicate files, and writing spreadsheet formulas. For others, the terminal stayed a black box. Cowork was designed to bring those same agent-like capabilities to a familiar chat interface.<\/p>\n
Anthropic illustrates the idea with three examples. A lawyer can have documents formatted and filed to free up more time for legal analysis. A hiring manager uses it to schedule interviews and summarize feedback so they can spend more time on candidates and work samples. A team lead can have slides built to explain a tough decision, buying them more time to actually make it. The blank screen is often the first hurdle, and Cowork helps turn thoughts and information into a first draft, Anthropic says.<\/p>\n
The taxonomy has gaps<\/p>\n
Anthropic itself notes that Business Ops classifies activities, not professions, and that there are no separate categories for marketing, finance, or HR. Those functions are likely folded into Business Operations, which Anthropic says probably helps explain why the category accounts for a third of all usage.<\/p>\n
The study has other limits. The sample captures only a fixed maximum number of sessions per hour, so peak times are underrepresented. The figures are percentages, not absolute volumes. About five percent of sessions involve personal use like hobbies or chatting, so the dataset doesn’t exclusively reflect work. Anthropic says it will keep updating the analysis.<\/p>\n
Anthropic recently expanded\u00a0Cowork from the desktop app to the web and smartphones<\/a>. Before that, the company had already given the agent the\u00a0ability to directly operate Mac and Windows desktops<\/a>.<\/p>\n A review paper by\u00a0Meta, Stanford, and the University of Illinois<\/a>\u00a0places systems like these in a broader trend. Code is no longer just the end product but the operational layer AI agents run on. Claude Code and Cowork, along with\u00a0OpenAI’s Codex (also known as ChatGPT Work)<\/a>, are considered prominent examples of this shift.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tAI News Without the Hype \u2013 Curated by Humans<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive “AI Radar” frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n