Anthropic's Cowork platform adds plug-ins to automate tasks
What's the story
Anthropic, a leading AI research company, has announced the addition of a new feature to its Cowork platform. The update comes in the form of 'plug-ins,' which are designed to automate specialized tasks across different departments in an organization. These tasks can range from creating marketing content and assessing document risks for legal teams, to drafting customer support responses.
Feature details
Plug-ins let users customize their workflows
The plug-ins are intended to let users customize their workflows by specifying how they want tasks done, which tools and data to use, how to manage critical workflows, and what slash commands should be available for consistent outcomes. Matt Piccolella from Anthropic's product team told TechCrunch that these plug-ins are customizable and enterprise users can create their own unique use cases with them.
Accessibility
Custom plug-ins easy to create and share
As part of the release, Anthropic has open-sourced 11 of its in-house plug-ins. The company stressed that custom plug-ins are easy to create, modify, and share without requiring much technical knowledge. Piccolella explained that the goal behind this launch is to bring these capabilities to Cowork and provide a user-friendly interface for maximum accessibility.
Use cases
Areas where plug-ins have already proved useful
Piccolella highlighted data analysis and sales as two areas where plug-ins have already proved useful. He said, "Sales has been a really big one, both for our direct sales people, but then also just getting anybody who's kind of sales adjacent, better connected to the customer and customer feedback." This shows the potential of plug-ins in enhancing business operations.
Expansion
What's next for Claude and Anthropic?
Anthropic has said that the more enterprise users use plug-ins, the more Claude learns about a company's workflows and how to optimize them. Currently, plug-ins are stored locally on a user's machine, but Anthropic is working on an organization-wide sharing tool. Cowork is still in its research preview phase and it's not clear when it will be widely available. For now, all paying Claude customers can access these plug-ins.