Cowork Mobile

Cowork can now be steered and accessed on mobile. Previously, cowork ran on a local OS container, with no remote access. That said, Anthropic has done a terrible job explaining how this all works.

Here’s a top ten list of my experience.

1. Any projects that you were using for cowork will not migrate over to cloud if they already access local files on disk. There is no obvious migration tool to make it work via cloud.
   • I found the best way to migrate was to create a new project in cowork, and then add the same local folder.
   • You’ll see this in your cowork projects list. There is a drop down for configuring the project to run in the cloud and it is disabled for existing projects involving folder access.
   • By creating a new project, it gives Claude the ability to re-establish the permissions it needs access a local folder + run in the new cloud format.
2. If you are working on a local cowork project, your conversations will not sync over to mobile. It is the most confusing part of this whole roll-out. Some conversations sync, others do not.
3. The easiest way to know if your cowork is working in the cloud, is that there is a little icon on the top left that shows a cloud icon. Same concept as Claude code. If you see a cloud, Claude is working from a cloud container. If you see a computer, Claude is local to your desktop.
4. The benefit of working in cowork mobile is that you can leverage your MCP connectors and local folders you’ve approved, and start a new task away from your computer. This is different from Claude Chat because while chat has some connectors, it is not MCP level and cannot work with files.
5. Claude cowork cloud very slow. Like, sssssssllllllooooooowww. I had cowork local tasks running snappy and when I moved them cloud-native, it got rough. Part of this is that managing files across MCP connectors is brutal. If you are familiar with using local CLI based connectors like google workspace-CLI where Claude Cowork could directly call a CLI, you can’t do that in a cloud container. You are reliant on the cloud container having access to the MCP connectors you’ve pre-configured. And that means MCP inefficiencies.
6. Part of the benefit of running cowork was direct file access and manipulation. File access is easy because Cowork would just pull the file into the mount path of its local container. In this remote cloud paradigm, that is no longer as easy. I did a test to move my folder into Google Drive, thinking it could replicate my local folder structure on disk. I immediately ran into problems.
   • It was slow. I know I said this before, but man, it is so bad.
   • MCP connectors are limited when it comes to write. Google Drive for example, lets you create files, but no update. You have to reupload each time.
   • Lack of MCP connector exposure to easily copy a file. The cloud container had to direct stream a file byte-by-byte over MCP, with the model as the translator. 500K tokens for a 500K file. Brutal.
   • In the end, I reverted back to local only for these projects because running everything through a kneecapped MCP was a terrible experience.
   • I think MCPs are the weakest link here. I wonder if we could get faster tooling on the cloud container, like the ability to have the googleworkspace-CLI installed an built into the container to improve speeds and capabilities rather than forcing us to go over MCP.
7. The hybrid cloud/desktop approach seems to be the goal-post here. Steer from mobile but access data from local disk via Claude Desktop. Occasionally start tasks from mobile where the ask is not heavy or time-bound. This requires your desktop to be open but that was always the case with Cowork scheduled tasks.
   • It is incredibly unclear what I can and cannot do at any moment. It is not clear, what folders I have access to from my session, it is not clear how I start a session to give myself folder access, it is not clear how to access folder enabled sessions from my mobile. All things that are being advertised.
8. On multiple occasions, the Cloud container just stopped responding. Like out of 30 tasks, around 5 just stopped where I was wondering where that conversation went, only to revisit it and notice it says “Starting .. 1s, 2s” all over again. This is after being prompted over 10m ago. Chalk it up to being in BETA.
9. It all feels like a worse Claude Code remote-control. I can kind of feel the friction the product owners were likely working through when they were building this out going, well what about this problem scenario, or this one, or that one.
   • For example, if I start a cowork session from the mobile client, even if I’m back on my desktop, I cannot then add folders or files to the discussion. I have to start a brand new chat from my desktop. friction.
10. All said, it’s an improvement from where we were before. I can access Cowork from my phone, where as yesterday, I had to go home and unlock my desktop. So that’s a win. And I expect they will iterate from here given that cowork is a very popular product. Unlike Dispatch? Can’t remember the last time that got some love since it was announced.