Quoting Felix Rieseberg
The "old" version of Cowork runs model inference in the cloud, executing tool calls in an Anthropic-provided VM we shipped to your computer.
Proof1 independent outlet
Key points
- People loved what they were able to do with Claude but didn't love the disk, battery, and performance cost of running the VM locally.
- The "new" version of Cowork runs model inference and the VM in the cloud.
- When the VM needs something on the users' device (like a file), the desktop app is responsible for that file access tool call. [...]
- Tags: claude-cowork, anthropic, claude, generative-ai, ai, general-agents, llms
Sources (1)
- [1]Quoting Felix RiesebergSimon Willison's Weblog · Oct 5, 11:56 PM
The "old" version of Cowork runs model inference in the cloud, executing tool calls in an Anthropic-provided VM we shipped to your computer.
People loved what they were able to do with Claude but didn't love the disk, battery, and performance cost of running the VM locally.
Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.
Hype check
Independently evaluated1 independent look since
- Evaluation · Oct 6, 2026Tool-calling retrieval versus vector RAG for a small Greek--English knowledge base: accuracy and robustness to how users type Greek
- Follow-up · Oct 6, 2026Expanding the Cyber Verification Program
- Follow-up · Oct 6, 2026[AINews] Reflection Beam - 501B-A23B American Open Model
- Follow-up · Oct 6, 2026Same Feedback, Different Answer: Measuring Run-to-Run Instability in Frontier-Model Customer Feedback Analysis
- Follow-up · Oct 6, 2026Rethinking Visual Provenance: Detection and Watermarking Across Direct Visual Generation and LLM-Driven Code Rendering
- Follow-up · Oct 6, 2026Thoughts from San Francisco
Before this
- Oct 5, 2026Sharing AI progress in mathematics
- Oct 2, 2026Anthropic invests $100 million to train 10,000 engineers and tackle the enterprise AI talent gap
- Oct 1, 2026Claude-shaped science
- Oct 1, 2026Barclays scales Claude to upgrade operations and improve client experience
- Sep 30, 2026Why Dwarkesh is Wrong about Computer Use + How OpenAI shipped its Jev competitor in 1 Week
- Sep 29, 2026Claude Code’s Next Era — Thariq Shihipar, Anthropic
