Earlier this month, Anthropic introduced Cowork, a new agentic tool aimed at expanding the functionality of its AI coding assistant, Claude Code, to benefit a broader range of users, including those with no coding expertise. Now, Anthropic has unveiled a powerful new feature within Cowork—plug-ins—designed to enhance the tool’s utility for enterprise users.
The concept behind plug-ins is straightforward: they are intended to automate specialized tasks across various departments within a company. This includes functions such as generating marketing content, examining legal documents for risks, and drafting customer support replies. The plug-ins leverage agentic automation to streamline workflow with a targeted focus.
According to Anthropic, these plug-ins allow users to specify how they prefer work to be conducted, which tools and data to utilize, how to manage critical workflows, and what commands should be accessible to ensure consistent outcomes for teams.
Matt Piccolella, part of Anthropic’s product team, highlighted the customizable nature of these plug-ins, expressing the company’s expectation that enterprise users will tailor them to create unique use cases. As part of the feature’s launch, Anthropic has made 11 in-house plug-ins available as open source, while emphasizing that custom plug-ins can be easily built, edited, and shared without requiring extensive technical skills.
Previously, plug-ins were accessible within Claude Code, and their inclusion in Cowork aims to broaden access and usability for diverse user types. Piccolella remarked, “With this launch, we are bringing them to Cowork and providing a user-friendly, UI-centric experience, allowing the maximum number of people to use them effectively.”
He also noted that departments like data analysis and sales have already benefited from plug-ins, stating, “Sales has been a really big one… getting anyone who’s sales-adjacent better connected to the customer and customer feedback.”
Anthropic believes that the increased adoption of plug-ins among enterprise users will enhance Claude’s understanding of their workflows and improve optimization. Currently, plug-ins are stored locally on a user’s machine, but the company plans to introduce an organization-wide sharing feature in the future.
Cowork, which was launched a couple of weeks ago, is still in its research preview stage, and the timeline for a broader release remains uncertain. However, plug-ins are now available to all paying Claude customers, offering an exciting advancement for enterprises looking to leverage AI for improved operational efficiency.