Agents Left the Chat: Desktop Tasks, Work Context, and One-Tap Checkout

Agents moved out of chat and into real workflows. Anthropic’s Claude Cowork adds “Tasks” to Claude Desktop: describe the outcome, and Claude runs multi-step work with direct local file access, coordinates sub-agents, and exports finished spreadsheets, slide decks, and organized folders back to your computer. Slack rebuilt Slackbot into a context-aware personal agent that uses the messages, files, channels, and tools you already have access to to generate briefings, surface decisions, and draft replies in your voice. Commerce followed: Google’s open-source Universal Commerce Protocol standardizes agentic checkout, while Microsoft’s Copilot Checkout keeps “conversation to conversion” inside Copilot.

References

Slackbot: https://slack.com/blog/news/slackbot-context-aware-ai-agent-for-work

Claude Cowork: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13345190-getting-started-with-cowork

Google UCP: https://developers.googleblog.com/under-the-hood-universal-commerce-protocol-ucp/

Microsoft Copilot Checkout: https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/blog/post/january-2026/conversations-that-convert-copilot-checkout-and-brand-agents