The Claude in Chrome side panel is now a full Claude Cowork session, and it’s the upgrade I’ve been waiting for. Anthropic just shipped it: conversations save to your history, your skills and connectors work right in the browser, and a task you start in one tab can be finished in the desktop, web, or mobile apps. It’s live on Max and Team plans today and rolling out to Pro users over the coming weeks.
Here’s why this matters. Until now, a session in the side panel was separate from sessions in the Claude apps, so context and conversations didn’t carry between them. Now the side panel runs the same Claude Cowork session you use on desktop, web, and mobile for longer, multi-step work. Because sessions live with your account rather than a single device, you can start work in a browser and pick it up later somewhere else.
Quick refresher for anyone who hasn’t tried it.
Claude in Chrome is a browser extension that lets Claude see the page you’re on and take actions in it, including clicking links, typing text, navigating between pages, and filling out forms, using your existing logins. Many of the tools you use every day connect directly to Claude, but others don’t, such as internal dashboards, legacy systems, and vendor portals. With Claude in Chrome, Claude can work in these apps through the browser.
Anthropic’s example is a good one. Say you’re putting together a budget spreadsheet and need to pull in invoices from several vendor portals. You can ask Claude in Chrome to collect the amounts and dates, and it will open the tabs, read each invoice, and build the spreadsheet. Then you can pick the session up in the desktop app to add files from your computer, or import last month’s budget and ask what’s changed, maintaining context across surfaces as you work.
Here’s the practical difference. Before this update, the side panel was a short-lived helper. You could ask Claude to summarize a page or pull details into a note, but the work ended when you closed the panel. Now the panel holds a real session with the same history, skills, and connectors you use in Cowork elsewhere. That turns the browser from a quick-reference tool into a place where actual work gets done, and it closes the gap that made browser-side Claude feel like a demo.
Why the Claude Cowork upgrade matters
What changes with Claude Cowork in the browser is continuity. The side panel now behaves like any other Cowork session. Your conversations are saved, every side panel session appears in your history like any other Cowork session, and sessions move with you: start a session in the side panel and pick it up on the web, in Claude Desktop, or on Claude Mobile. Sessions live with your Claude account rather than with the machine you started on. Your skills, plugins, and connectors work here, and they behave the same way they do in Cowork on desktop.
Now the part I always flag when agents get browser powers: prompt injection. Malicious actors hide instructions in web content, such as a web page, an email, or a document. These instructions may not be visible to you, but they can redirect Claude to take actions you never intended. Anthropic says it added a check on Claude’s own actions since the pilot. Use automatically approve and Claude works through a task without stopping for permission at every step. Before anything consequential, like submitting a form, sending a message, or downloading a file, a separate check reviews the action against what you originally asked for and blocks anything that doesn’t match. Claude still asks before certain irreversible or costly actions, like making a purchase or sharing personal data.
The honest read: these measures meaningfully reduce the risk, but they cannot eliminate it. Prompt injection is a moving target, so Anthropic keeps hunting for new attacks and building what it learns into each model it releases. The company recommends starting on sites you trust.
One more thing on access. The new side panel is available on Max and Team plans today and is rolling out to Pro users over the coming weeks. On Enterprise plans, Claude in Chrome is off by default, and admins can turn it on and limit it to approved domains. You’ll still need the Claude desktop app to work with files on your computer or with other applications. Claude in Chrome doesn’t run on other Chromium browsers or on mobile yet.
This is the direction I’ve been expecting from Anthropic all year. I’ve ranked the best AI coding agents, and the pattern keeps repeating: the tools that win are the ones that carry context with you. Claude Cowork in the browser is that same pattern applied to everyday work, not just code. The independent agent investigations I’ve covered keep hitting the same conclusion: browser agents are powerful, and they’re only as safe as the guardrails around them. Anthropic is shipping both halves of that equation here, more reach in the browser and a separate check before anything consequential.
