Claude Cowork is here. And so are the memes

Anthropic is undoubtedly having a moment right now. First came Claude Code, an AI-powered coding tool for developers, in early 2025, which quickly gained a cult following among that community. “You spent your holidays with your family? That’s nice I spent my holidays with Claude Code,” recently posted one tech-policy expert. But most people aren’t developers, let alone know their way around a command-line interface. 

So last week, Anthropic launched Claude Cowork, which the company calls “Claude Code for the rest of your work.” Available now as a research preview on Anthropic’s $100-per-month Max plan, Cowork is the best example of what “vibe coding“—an AI-powered approach where people use natural language prompts to bring their software ideas to life—can do. Designed for non-developers, it’s a desktop app that aims to help regular workers with all kinds of tasks, like organizing files or crunching data.

Case in point: Anthropic’s new working agent was largely built by Claude itself, in just a week and a half. The memes write themselves.

“Claude, here is a picture of my bank account. claude, make that number go up to $1 billion. make no mistakes,” one X user prompted.

“Claude here is my life. all of it. down to the last detail. make me happy. beautiful. successful. make no mistakes,” another posted.

“Claude, here are my notes where I keep all of my passwords. here are my bank account details and phone number for 2fa. run my life and make money,” wrote another. “Make no mistakes.”

While Claude might not be able to satisfy those demands (yet), AI is undoubtedly turning the workforce on its head. Research shows that 85% of employees globally are saving one to seven hours a week with AI. Yet, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that we could be “sleepwalking into a white-collar bloodbath,” with AI wiping out huge swathes of entry-level jobs in just one update.

Software engineers in particular, have found themselves directly in the impact zone. 

“Yea I’m a full-stack engineer”, one X user posted. Their stack: Claude, Terminal, and Cursor. But they aren’t alone. “Bankers, lawyers, and consultants looking at everyone else joining them in the unemployment line after the Claude Cowork release,” quipped another.

In fact, no one is marked safe. “I’m assembling a team,” wrote one X user alongside an image of a company leadership team with Claude in every C-suite role. A follow-up post read “just got kicked out of my own company.”

“Got told I was ‘slowing everyone down.'” 

Despite the discourse, data currently shows that there’s little evidence for actual AI-caused displacement in the job market. For now, we’ll at least have the popcorn ready for the memes that just won’t quit.

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