Claude Cowork vs OpenClaw: Which AI agent works for your business?

Anthropic now has two agentic products and teams are trying to figure out which one to use. Claude Code is built for developers, while Claude Cowork is built for everyone else.

But the more important question is whether either tool is the right fit for a team that needs to collaborate across roles, stay secure, and avoid falling behind by locking into a single AI model.

In this article, we’ll show you what you need to know about Claude Code and Claude Cowork, and provide a third option worth considering.

What is Claude Code?

Claude Code is a command-line coding agent built for developers. It runs in your terminal or via a VS Code extension.

You describe a problem and Claude Code reads your entire codebase so it can operate with full project context. It handles refactoring, debugging, test writing, and Git workflows.

Claude Code is powerful, but it requires technical setup. Once you install it on your computer you must self-manage permissions and choose which files and tools it has access to. Because of this, Claude Code is not suitable for non-developers.

What is Claude Cowork?

Claude Cowork is a desktop application for non-technical knowledge workers. It runs inside the Claude desktop app on Mac and Windows and operates on files in a local folder you grant it access to.

The interaction model is different from Claude Code. You describe the outcome you want, give Cowork access to your files, and walk away. It handles file organization, PDF extraction, report generation, and spreadsheet creation autonomously.

Cowork runs inside a virtual machine for isolation, but it's still in research preview. It requires a Max plan, and has both a 5-hour usage limit and a weekly limit. Hitting the weekly limit can result in a 3-day wait for the credits to reset.

The security problem with local AI agents

Both Claude Code and Cowork run semi-autonomously on your computer, which introduces a security risk.

Security firm PromptArmor demonstrated that Claude Cowork is vulnerable to file exfiltration through indirect prompt injection. A malicious file disguised as a Claude "Skill" can trigger a curl command that uploads confidential data, including financial records and partial SSNs, to an attacker's Anthropic account. No human approval is required at any step.

Anthropic acknowledges using Claude Cowork comes with “unique risks”. Their security guidance includes the following:

• Avoid granting access to local files with sensitive information, like financial documents.
• When using the Claude in Chrome extension, limit access to trusted sites.
• If you chose to extend Claude’s default internet access settings, be careful to only extend internet access to sites you trust.
• Monitor Claude for suspicious actions that may indicate prompt injection.
• Ensure you’re using trusted MCPs (as always).

For non-technical users, auditing every website you allow Claude to browse is unrealistic. And limiting your agent’s access to important business documents undermines the primary use case for Claude Cowork.

Adapt: a hosted, collaborative, multi-model alternative

Adapt is a third option that addresses the gaps in Claude Code and Claude Cowork.

Hosted, not local. Adapt runs in a secure cloud sandbox. There's no local file access to exploit, no CLI to configure, and no desktop app to install. The exfiltration attack surface that PromptArmor exposed doesn't apply because your files never sit on the same machine as the agent.

Collaborative, not single-player. Claude Code and Cowork are both single-player tools. One person, one session, one machine.

Adapt runs on the web, but also in Slack. Any teammate can @mention Adapt in a DM, channel, or thread. Adapt can respond privately or can move to a public channel without losing context.

As our comparison of AI agents in Slack found, most AI tools (including Claude and ChatGPT) default to isolated, single-user experiences. But Adapt is built for teams.

Multi-model, not locked in. Adapt routes every task to the best model for the job. For example, Claude for code generation, GPT for business analysis, or Gemini for large-context research. You don't have to pick the model. Instead, you describe the work and Adapt handles the rest

What cross-team collaboration looks like with Adapt

Here's an example of what you can do with Adapt, that you can’t easily replicate with Claude Cowork or Claude Code.

Imaging that your support rep notices a spike in tickets about a broken CSV export in your product.

Support @mentions Adapt in the #support-escalations Slack channel:

"Pull the last 48 hours of Zendesk tickets mentioning CSV export. How many customers are affected and is there a pattern?"

Adapt queries Zendesk, finds 34 tickets across 12 accounts, and identifies the pattern. Exports over 10,000 rows are failing silently. The analysis is visible to the whole channel.

Engineering sees the response and follows up in the same thread:

"@Adapt, check the GitHub repo for recent commits touching the export module."

Adapt finds a commit from last week that changed the pagination logic. The engineer doesn't re-explain the problem because Adapt already has context from the support query.

Product jumps in: "@Adapt, pull usage data from BigQuery. How many accounts use CSV exports with more than 10k rows?"

Adapt runs the query. 187 accounts, including 4 enterprise customers. Product has what they need to prioritize.

Marketing @mentions Adapt after the fix ships to draft a short incident email for affected customers, referencing the 34 tickets and the resolution.

With Claude Code, this stays in one engineer's terminal. Or with Cowork, it stays on one person's desktop. With Adapt, every team builds on the last person's question. No context is lost, and no work is repeated.

How Claude Code, Claude Cowork, and Adapt compare

FAQ

What is the difference between Claude Code and Claude Cowork?

Claude Code is a CLI-based coding agent for developers. It runs in the terminal with full codebase access. Claude Cowork is a desktop app for non-technical users that automates file management and workflow tasks without writing code.

Is Claude Cowork secure?

Security firm PromptArmor demonstrated that Cowork is vulnerable to file exfiltration via indirect prompt injection. A malicious file can upload confidential data to an attacker's account without any human approval. Anthropic has not remediated the vulnerability.

Can Claude Code or Cowork be used by a team?

Both are single-player tools. They don't support shared threads, team @mentions, or collaborative workflows. Each person works in their own isolated session.

What is a good alternative to Claude Code and Cowork?

Adapt is a hosted, multi-model AI agent that works in Slack and connects to your existing tools. It supports real-time collaboration across teams and avoids the security risks of local agents.

Does Adapt use Claude?

Yes. Adapt uses Claude alongside OpenAI and Gemini, routing each task to the best model for the job.

Ready to try a collaborative AI agent? Get early access to Adapt.