Anthropic Expands Claude Cowork With Custom Plugins and Automation Tools

Anthropic has rolled out a major update to Claude Cowork, enabling users to extend the automation tool with custom plugins and task-specific AI agents. The move is aimed at giving teams greater flexibility in tailoring Claude to their workflows across departments such as sales, marketing and accounting.

Claude Cowork, introduced earlier this month, is designed to automate multistep tasks across file systems and web browsers. It can already handle actions such as summarising downloaded documents or organising folders. With the latest update, users can now create their own plugins to add new capabilities.

Plugins can include Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, allowing Claude Cowork to connect with external applications. For example, a sales team could build a plugin that pulls lead information directly from a customer relationship management platform. Users can also create sub-agents—specialised versions of Claude optimised for specific tasks, with customised permissions and instructions, such as generating data visualisations in a defined style.

The update also introduces custom slash commands, which act as shortcuts for triggering user-defined automation workflows. Anthropic is providing a plugin creation wizard, along with 10 prebuilt plugins focused on common business functions and general productivity tasks like research and to-do management.

Anthropic said it plans to release an enhanced plugin system in the coming weeks, including internal plugin catalogues for enterprises.

Alongside the update, the company highlighted real-world use cases, noting that NASA has used Claude to accelerate mission planning. According to Anthropic, the chatbot helped generate navigation instructions for the Perseverance Mars rover, cutting task time in half and successfully guiding the rover across a 1,300-foot rocky path.