Claude Chat vs. Cowork vs. Code in 5 Minutes: Which One to Use When?

Hey, this is Isaac from Oster.co, where we've helped more than 100 accounting firms integrate AI and automation into how their teams work. And if you've ever opened the Claude desktop app, or even if you haven't, you've probably heard about Claude Chat, Claude Co, or Claude Co. How do you know which one to open when you're about to do a task? That's what this video is about. We're going to talk about when to use which one, who it is for, and a deep walkthrough so you can see what is the UI, the distinction specifically Between all 3. As a quick summary off the bat, I built this artifact within Claude Chat, which we're gonna be discussing in detail later. But fundamentally, I like to think about Chat as a thinking partner, and effectively its main function is gonna be chatting back and forth with you. Cork, on the other hand, is when you're able to do work and get stuff done and delegate, and in many cases, get it to run on a schedule on the background automatically. Claude Code, as its name suggests, is really when you're trying to build and ship software, although it can be very powerful for other things as well, as we're gonna see. Based on that, you know, fundamentally the Claude Chat is for everyone, while the Cowork is for knowledge workers that are non-technical, and the Claude Code is for builders, not just coders. A quick side note, actually Claude Code came first before Cowork, and Claude realized a lot of knowledge workers were using Claude Code to get their work done. And so I also like to see Cowork as a more simplified and user-friendly version Of Claude Code, fundamentally. When you think about the time horizons of the tasks you're doing, if it's something that will take seconds to minutes, you might be looking at Claude Chat. If it's something that's gonna take longer to do and you wanna run in the background, you might be looking at Codework. And Codework for things that can run the longest. In Claude Chat, you're primarily driving every turn, where on Codework you can, you know, get this thing to run on the background, delegate work, and simply supervise, similar to Claude Code. And fundamentally what you'll get at the end in Claude Chat is more often than not an answer, an artifact, perhaps an output within a tool if you have have it connected, while in Core you might also have the ability to have finished files on your folders and tools, and in Claude Code, committed code and pull requests and a running application. Claude is available fundamentally everywhere in the desktop app, in the browser, and in the mobile phone, while Core is only available in the desktop app. It's one of its powers but also one of its disadvantages, while Claude Code can also be similar to Claude Chat, available in multiple places. Let's look at each in detail. When you're creating a new chat, as its name suggests here in Claude Chat, one of the differentiators compared to other ones is you have voice mode. Literally, I was using voice mode in my mobile app this morning as I was working on the outline for this video. Like you have in Cowork as well, you have the ability to access projects that can be shared across the team, as well as artifacts that are shared across all 3 products, Chat, Cowork, and Code. You also have the ability to have skills. Connectors, and plugins, which are essentially collection of skills. So all the capabilities are fundamentally available in all of them. The only exception is that projects within Cowork are private to that current instance, while in Chat you can share with your team and they can share with you. And at least as of this recording, projects are not available in Code itself. As we look at the interface, one of the things worth knowing is that for a Claude Chat, I'll be able to at any point in time see artifacts or content that I've exchanged within that chat. And I can see artifacts, which are usually documents or artifacts or simple mini web pages like the one I shared before in this video, where you'd be able to interact with it right here and there, as well as share them, in this case, with your team. And if you are on a personal plan, actually shared in public. The way Cowork works, however, is that you now have access to your folders and files within your computer. You're able to, at any point, select which specific folders you want to give Cloud Cowork access to. One of the other things you might notice here is that I have some active tasks within Cowork. This really gives me the ability to multitask if I am working on 3 or 4 sessions at a time and I want to see which one is available or which one needs my input or which one has been completed. Cowork is really built for multitasking because I can also add new composites as such so I can spin up multiple tasks at a time. Another differentiator within Cowork is that an artifact can actually be connected to a Claude connector. An example of an inbox action item that pulls data from my Gmail account and it's able to present it within a simple app and simple artifact within Claude Cowork. This would only work as of this recording within Claude Cowork specifically. Another capability you have available within Claude Cowork, it's its ability to schedule tasks. So I could have a task that runs on a daily basis and this is an example of having a simple daily meeting prep task having already run. Although within Claude Chat, I was only able to see artifacts and content, things I have uploaded, you'll notice that now I'm able to see within Claude Cowork runs if I'm working on scheduled tasks, progress if the task created a plan that it needed to execute, the specific working folder I'm working on at any given time, and the context of that task. It's worth noting too, at any point you can also open up the tool calls to assess and understand what is everything that it did and what are all the tools it called to do its job. As an example, this particular task looks once at my email and my calendar to pull all the calendar events, but then depending on who is an attendee of that call, it's pulling a variety of prior meetings to understand the context and help me prepare. This really gives a lot of visibility and traceability into what it did without you having to go into the individual or open up the commands Like you would have to do in Claude Chat. Similar to Claude Chat, at any point, any artifact, any document, any Excel, any mini app, you'll be able to open up and see and preview right here and right there. And this is just an example of the output of this daily meeting prep agent that helps me look at my calendar, research or see what tasks or meetings I've had with the people I'm about to talk to, and then help me prepare accordingly. Most accounting firms think they're moving towards automation, but when you look under the hood, What we find is messy spreadsheets, silo tools, and half-baked workflows that are still slowing them down. So that's why we built our AI and automation readiness quiz, which just in 10 quick questions, you'll be able to see where your firm is strong and where you're falling behind. Here's why it matters. Understanding where you stand is the first step our clients take towards a smoother, more scalable practice. That's exactly how Donna Bordeaux cut a full-time bookkeeping role and went from 90 hours a month down to 1 day a month of her time while scaling her firm from 45 to 60 clients without adding new staff. And that's how Gareth, a partner in a Canadian tax firm, went from dreading every January to looking forward to tax season and actually earning 47% more per hour on their tax return work without price increase. So feel free to check the link in the description, take that quiz now and see exactly where you stand. All right, now back to the video. Last but not least, you have Claude Co. Although somewhat outside of the scope of this video, I do want to briefly share the 2 things that you'll really appreciate. You're able to push code into a repository, what's essentially a storage where the code actually is hosted and lives directly through Claude Code. So this is an example of me using it for a website. I, I took a screenshot. I really like this thing that this website has, which showcases the different regions of the world where this agency has clients. I want the same for myself. Boom, it pushed it to a version of our website that we have yet to launch, but that I've been working with Claude Code on. Also, if you have local files and code in those local files, you're able to preview the app directly. So beyond being able to push code directly into GitHub, which is like the main or primary tool coders use to source and store code, you'd also have the ability to like preview the code you're building. So this is just an example of a specific page we are kind of working on at the moment in Affirm. To be able to showcase the most common use case that we see firms have. And you can see how I have the ability to very easily preview that straight from Claude's code interface. Just because it has code in the name, don't feel like you have to be a coder to try using it. So that's Claude Chat, Cowork, and Code. But here's what I didn't get into. Picking the right arena doesn't mean much if you don't know what tools to work with. Once you're inside of it, we briefly touched on skills, projects, and artifacts. Most people mix them up or don't use them at all, and that's the piece that actually changes how much you get out of Claude day to day. And it's exactly what I break down in my next video, what each capability is for and where I see teams using the right ones. So go watch that video next, and until then, stay efficient.