The Open Source Powered Alternative to Claude Cowork is Here (And it is mind-blowing)

Many of my readers, especially the coders, are familiar with Claude Code and use it on a daily basis for all sorts of things, not just coding, but also for research, organising files, and so on. However, non-tech guys did not have the pleasure until Claude Cowork with Releases came along, with some labelling it as the second ChatGPT moment.

In a nutshell, Cowork helps users automate repetitive tasks such as organising files and folders, creating professional documents from unstructured notes, analysing and synthesising research data, and automating web-based tasks. Unlike the usual way we are used to with ChatGPT, where precise instructions and careful review are needed, Claude Cowork is different in many ways.

• It develops a well-thought-out plan on how to accomplish a given complex task from start to finish.
• It spawns multiple agents ad hoc (think of it as a scalable team on demand).
• It extends code in a sandbox environment, giving it the full power of coding without any prior coding knowledge from the user (e.g. reading and editing files, calling APIs, and much more).

It also has many more capabilities.

This shift has already started a new era that is becoming increasingly groundbreaking and empowering for businesses (and, as always, a threat to technology-averse people).

However, it has one caveat: it costs $100–200 per month, which, while the incredibly powerful tool certainly justifies the cost, you might not want to spend just yet.

This all sounds like magic, and it actually is, but it's not new. The underlying technology has actually been available for months, and it is the Agent SDK (https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview). In a nutshell, it runs an entire agent fleet in the Claude and gives it access to a sandbox for code execution.

Luckily, there is a way you can try this same technology using open source, without any coding experience or upfront costs.

The tool I am talking about is called Cherry Studio, a chatbot like ChatGPT, but with an insane amount of features that I can hardly cover in one post. One of those features is the Claude Agent Builder, which lets you create an agent like Claude Cowork with just a few clicks. This agent can do the exact same things as Claude Cowork (under the hood, it uses the Claude Agent SDK).