Claude Cowork Moves to Cloud

Anthropic announced a major architectural shift for Claude Cowork: moving tool execution from local user VMs to cloud-based sandboxes.

Previous versions ran inference in the cloud but required a local VM for operations, causing high disk usage, battery drain, and task interruption when laptops closed. The new architecture assigns each session an isolated cloud sandbox, with the desktop app handling only specific file access requests.

This change aims to unlock mobile potential, allowing users to run complex tasks on phones without local compute constraints. According to Anthropic engineer Felix Rieseberg, this directly addresses core user complaints regarding battery life and portability.