Key takeaways

Claude Code isn't one app. It's a single agent engine behind a terminal CLI, IDE extensions, a Desktop tab, and Claude Code on the web. Your CLAUDE.md and MCP servers travel with you across all of them.

Claude Cowork runs the same engine inside a sandboxed desktop (and now web/mobile beta) workspace, organized around local folders and a background planner called Dispatch, but it doesn't read your Claude Code CLI's ~/.claude setup.

Claude Tag puts Claude in your team's Slack channels under the organization's own shared credentials, not any one person's. That's the real difference from Cowork and Code, which stay private to you.

"Routines" names at least three unrelated things: cloud-run Claude Code Routines, local Desktop scheduled tasks, and Slack-native Claude Tag routines. They don't share a task list.

The organizing question isn't "which tool is smartest". It's whose credentials run the work, and who gets to see it.

Anthropic didn't ship one Claude product this year.…