r/ClaudeCowork • u/Tasty_Stand_7014 • 3d ago
They killed Projects and replaced it with a different product that kept the name
Max 20x subscriber here, and I'm an attorney. Projects was the reason I pay for Claude. It was simple: a folder for each case. Persistent files every chat could read, standing instructions, and a clean list of separate chats. One for the demand letter, one for discovery, one for a motion, all drawing on the same case file.
Today I made a new project and that's gone. Claude's own intro screen says it: "A project used to be a folder. Now it's one ongoing chat."
What you get now looks like a SaaS dashboard, not Claude.
There's one endless conversation with a coordinator bot. Your requests get spun off into threads in a side panel, sorted into "Working," "Idle," and "Waiting on you." There are status checklists, squiggly "New" lines, preview cards, an Overview tab and a Library. It even lives under Claude Code, which I've never used.
There's no list of chats, no simple project knowledge panel, and no toggle to go back. Old projects still work, but you can't make new ones that way. The only thing this shares with Projects is the name.
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u/Delicious_Mood43 3d ago
I was very confused today but honestly had no time to look into this. Thanks for clearing it up
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u/Straight-Score-3108 3d ago
This is "How to Lose Subscribers in 10 Days". Why did the have to mess this up. That is exactly why I signed up. Not this discombobulated "update".
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u/Lucid-Crow 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm such a heavy user of projects that Anthropic didn't push this update to me lol.
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u/Apprehensive-Fig5774 2d ago
Same. I don’t even know what they are talking about but I should be worried
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u/BingBongDingDong222 3d ago
I’m also a lawyer. I moved on from Cowork to Code. You may say ”I’m not a Code.” Trust me, try it.
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u/Tar_Tw45 1d ago
I'm ex software developer, system analyst and now CTO
Been using Code for coding and Cowork for project discovery the whole time
But never thought about using Code to replace Cowork, thanks for the idea!!
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u/BingBongDingDong222 1d ago
I’m a lawyer. I was getting frustrated with coworkers sandboxing me and being unable to do so many things, and I moved on to code and never look back
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u/Fickle-Werewolf-6168 7h ago
Cowork was created for people who don’t code to still get all of the features that Claude code has. Anthropic created it because of all the non-coding work they saw their customers doing.
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u/Broad-Ad-911 2d ago
Why? And how?
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u/BingBongDingDong222 2d ago
Just instead of loading Cowork, go to the code tab and do the same exact thing in the same exact manner as you would in Cowork.
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u/3iverson 3d ago
Claude Code is exactly what you need. I switched to the Claude Code + Ovsidian and have never looked back at the Claude desktop app.
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u/KillerPenguinz 2d ago
Can you give me the tldr (or a link) on Claude code and obsidian? I use notion so I'm curious how you're setting it up to replace the projects functionality.
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u/3iverson 2d ago
I am not at my computer but would be happy to share some details. Send me a DM in a day or 2 if I haven’t posted (or anyone else as well.)
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u/Kiko_Okik 14h ago
I’d also like to get the tldr please.
But I’ll share my setup; I’ve been using obsidian and CC and I love it, it has a Claude md and vault rules that tell it how things work and what it’s allowed to do and not do, and I mostly use it for creating templates and organizing my files. But the main benefit is it’s my knowledge base that’s easily accessible and convenient UI on mobile, and my iPad, and Claude can read anything in there and work in there/drop files in there, which then immediately show up on my end if I’m on mobile/remote and it’s working on desktop on my PC at home. I frequently use it this way while I’m at the office and send it shit to handle like an executive assistant, and I’ve got work projects sorted into a filing system that’s uniform and I gave it a clear atlas and skeleton filing key to follow so it sorts new things into the same filing system I actually want not just what it thinks is best (unless I approve a proposal which I always solicit as welcome at any time, to be saved to the “proposals” note in my vault inbox where I can approve, modify or reject proposals. Anything I drop into a certain folder will be picked up at home by the session running orchestration and added to the plan/lane board.
I have several automated scripts that fire on a daily schedule, like 3am each day it runs a end of day script to close out everything open the day before, execute any approved proposals, sweep my email and capture system for updates to my task list and then spins up a headless opus to write my morning brief and run a cycle of my email system (which is a whole complex thing I made with Claude and is mostly scripts now with a Claude session writing the prose) so that I have my morning brief in my vault inbox when I wake up, and drafts sitting ready in my email drafts folder.
This whole process utilizes several custom Claude skills chained together and scripts automated everything that could be done by scripts, cutting down on token usage. I’ve also set up several hooks to turn rules that were prose (read: optional) into scripts and cut down bloat in boot reads.
I don’t work in computer stuff nor am actually a coder so I learned everything through the past couple of years of fixing my videgame mods and then slowly being tought by Claude and lots of trial and error. My real work however is complex and covers a broad variety of fields and I’ve been building myself an ideal executive assistant essentially training my own assistant that’s half script that doesn’t even need a model/tokens anymore.
I use Claude chat/cloud api for the voice mode sessions I have a whole protect dedicated to that. Drops briefs and summaries that use a template format into my vault after each session. Oh every single sessions saves a closing report template to the vault after every task/session finishes. This has been helpful for weekly reviewed and troubleshooting/refining/building.
So how do you guys use obsidian with it? Do you use the voice mode ever and do you use fable or opus or sonnet or max effort or what? Brainstorming and hashing things out in voice mode is probably my favorite thing to use it for. I sometimes use voice to text and play its responses aloud when I need it to be smarter or hold more context for the brainstorm, than actual voice mode can handle, but it can currently handle most stuff holding a much smaller context at once. It’s a bit janky sometimes though. I load its project folder with whatever it needs that day and my core profile summary and workflow summary, so that it’s only got what it needs for that session and not everything in the vault. It’s connected though so it could access vault if I switch to text (from voice).
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u/Disastrous_Shop_7994 3d ago
Move to Code, several benefits:
1. It is introducing Projects there ( roll out phase, check it here https://claude.com/it/form/projects
2. Code is doing the same tasks of Cowork, sharing the same engine, but different UI
3. It is faster and "cheaper" (in terms of used tokens)
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u/saltbaruk 2d ago
I thought Code was just for developing apps? So it can be used for other things that Cowork can do?
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u/Tyda2 2d ago
Think of it like this:
Claude, and it's models (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus, and Fable {Mythos}) are just the AI intelligence. That is the product, in a nutshell, from Anthropic.
Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Claude Design, Claude.ai...?
These are just different interfaces to accessing the same intelligence. The models themselves don't change. They can do virtually the same things, because they are the same underlying agent.
The only differences between these different interfaces are the 'Harrness'. For your understanding, think of the 'Harness' as a system prompt, like a prompt that you, yourself, would give to Claude: "I need X, follow guidelines from Y, and don't do Z"
Except, because it's a 'system' prompt, it's always present, like Claude's own internal instructions, designed by Anthropic, because it's basically the same thing, just another layer of it.
Claude in these different surfaces has slightly different instructions and ideas of how to communicate to the user, which maximizes it's utility for each one, which is why if you tell Claude inside of Claude Code to make you a web page design it might not be as pretty as telling Claude inside of Claude Design the exact same thing; because Claude Design has a system prompt that guides it on how to BEST make user designs.
Can you get the same type of outputs from Claude in both Code and Design?
Yes. Is it more difficult? Also yes.
Are there ways to offset this? Absolutely: skills/plugins can help bridge that gap to a degree, as well as your own prompts.
TL;DR: Claude is Claude, no matter where you access it. What changes, sometimes, are what tools it has access to, and the 'context' it starts with to do what it needs to do given the interface the user is accessing it from, which tailors and curates it's outputs to match.
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u/JustinHall02 2d ago
Code is such a bad term for it. You just have to realize everything in computing is code.
You don’t have to know code. I do graphic design, website building, proposals and quotes, legal reviews, accounting, all thru Claude code.
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u/Artistic_Function796 14h ago
Don't u think that Claude through normal chat is better tuned to general tasks (non code)? I always had this idea that the model through code is perhaps different and won't perform well.
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u/chocolim 2d ago
Put your context in a folder and add it to the project
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u/mohuju 2d ago
Is it really just this simple?
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u/FCharless 2d ago
Yes, I made a Substack post how to organize that: https://empoweredhouse.substack.com/p/compound-interest-for-knowledge-workers
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u/only-the-left-titty 3d ago
Other than the persistent files, code still does everything else you want. You would just have to translate some skill files and whatever other docs you have. Asking Claude to do that isn't a big deal.
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u/orphenshadow 2d ago
This has been a frustration for me, I have three accounts now, One for my personal projects, one for work day to day things, meetings and such, and one for a mapping/diagram project that I'm working on that needed some extra usage.
Two of the three accounts got this new interface, and it's broken my entire flow, now the coordinator does nothing but relay to a thread, i cant see what those threads are doing, and my normal skills of pulling my memory at start and saving notes in a wrap a the end of the day no longer works because now i have 8 threads instead of the 1 or 2 chats each day for the topics i wanted.
i'm adjusting and im getting to where I just have it open the thread for the day and do everything inside that thread.
But I absolutely wish they would let us have both options, the threaded projects, or legacy projects.
I also do not wish to upload copies of my files to anthropic, so all my work relies on mounted local folders.
Since this change, claude is now running apps/scripts on my machine like it's claude code and no longer in the cloud env container as before, so I had to re-write half of my skills to compensate.
If the main orchestrator actually did anything beyond play traffic cop, it might be useful, but right now its like they added a feature with no real purpose. I was more than capable of opening my own threads before.
Also the "coordinator" no longer shares the skills or memories of the "threads" so if you ask it to do a task it just copy pastes your input to a new chat..
Utterly fucking pointless, it's like they vibe coded another feature no one asked for.
I liked having my cowork and claude code separate, cowork worked differently for a reason, it was my personal assistant at WORK and when I opened a folder in claude code, I liked that I had a different set of skills and connectors and could manage both.
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u/JacobA89 2d ago
I thought one ongoing chat used more tokens since it has to scan everything before a reply.
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u/Kindly-Concentrate93 2d ago
Are you using the web or the desktop? I have been able to keep project thus far on the desktop version for now.
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u/Aktrading 2d ago
I was logged out, when I logged back in my projects were gone too. I was able to have Claude where to find them. When logged into the App on my Mac, it is found in the chat bubble at the top left of the screen. Once I clicked that my projects came back.
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u/Professional-Money49 1d ago
give it a rest, the old claude projects was just a folder. this is orchestration and a project in a folder. Its a step forward.
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u/stilet21 23h ago
At first it felt very stable, especially as it felt like it's finally closing the gap between the intersection of Claude Projects + Claude Code + Cowork. They spin up cloud sessions and from time to time bring it back to your local machine if there's necessary accessibility.
But also as the OP says the streamlined structure for bringing back certain artifacts is very limited. I think the move is one that will eventually pick up in agent systems and it's in my opinion the right one:
Do not give the user the feeling that they need to manage and babysit their subsessions, shorter outputs, documents as reference, and very native agent communication.
After some bouncing between coordinator and threads I felt like I can now do anything from developing fixing bugs, refining features and doing strategic work within one project and having all that accessible through the coordinator.
I got very excited, but in the end had a lot of trouble with how Much granular accessibility of one specific interaction you might have.
Claude code is just bangers these days when it comes to asking you questions on big inputs you might have. And this is what I keep missing. Their multiple choice or ask user questions are Super limited in projects, and I also can easily fork off those sub project frets to steer them manually or dive in them.
If they integrate this more natively with Claude Code and having and giving you access to the threads that are locally and therefore the same asked user question logic. I think this will be the right direction as you're starting to talk to a sort of your manager, coordinator more than to any other ones. But I think it's quite a way to there.
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u/Philosophy_1017 9h ago edited 9h ago
💯. I got pissed as a pro subscriber. Not even any lead time or sufficient heads up. I already cancelled my subscription and riding out the rest of my annual agreement. Is Chatgpt / Codex any better? Wish someone here can chime in.
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u/Financial-Outside158 2d ago
Max user here as well.... I totally agree! I HATE Cowork and HATE the fact that it was forced on me. To be honest I cant wait for a class action suite around this very issue. Think about it. We pay $200 per month and they degraded our experience at gun point. I see my cowork consumption is now double if not triple the usage and my chats compact 3x faster. I am so angry it has killed my productivity
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u/laurentmelo8 2d ago
C'est juste leur meilleure feature ever. Avoir un agent d'orchestration qui permet de tout gérer sans se poser la question des conversations c'est juste génial. D'autant qu'on peut mixer des repo dans un même projet encore mieux.
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u/endofthread-bot 3d ago
You are likely viewing the new agentic interface rather than the standard Projects feature. Check your account settings or the top-level menu to see if you can toggle off experimental features or switch back to the classic project creation view.
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