Cowork — home and task detail

What it is

The Cowork home page is where tasks start. The task detail view is where they run. Both are in the Home surface and worth knowing separately — one is about kicking off work, the other is about watching it unfold.

Where to find it

On desktop

Home (the default surface) → the landing page is the home. Start a task with New.
Click any Active or Recents item to enter task detail.

How to use it

The home page

Top of the page: “Let’s knock something off your list”, with a subtitle linking to “Learn how to use Cowork safely.”

The composer has the same rotating placeholder as Chat. Below the composer:

Work in a project dropdown — lists Recent folders with their disk paths. Scopes the task.
Ask dropdown — Ask for approvals (default) or Skip all approvals.
Model picker — pick a model; the desktop lineup now includes Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 5.

Below the composer, the page shows:

Active — in-progress tasks with “N days ago” timestamps. A Clear active action lives here.
Scheduled — tiles for tasks on a schedule.
Paused tasks carry a pause icon.

Task detail

Three columns:

Left — the Cowork sidebar.
Middle — the task conversation. User prompts, Claude’s tool runs, produced files with Show in Folder, inline validation messages.
Right rail — Progress (N of M complete), Instructions with referenced files, Scratchpad (Claude’s working notes), Context (connector and skill badges, e.g. docx, gmail).

A reply composer sits at the bottom with its own Ask dropdown and model picker.

Good to know

The Scratchpad is Claude’s thinking. If a task goes wrong, it’s the first place to look.
Show in Folder is native — click it and Finder opens at the file location.
The right rail persists. Reopen a task weeks later and it’s exactly as you left it.

What’s changed recently

2026-07-12 — The Cowork home now lives in the new Home surface (the former Chat and Cowork tabs merged; top-level nav is now a Home | Code toggle). Tasks start from Home → New. Model lineup now includes Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 5. Verified on build 1.20186.1.
2026-04-18 — Page verified.