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Claude Cowork is Anthropic’s agent for knowledge work — the same agentic engine as Claude Code, but built for non-technical tasks inside the Claude desktop app, with no terminal required. It works across your local files, folders, and applications while you steer. Cowork supports third-party inference providers, so it can run on any model in the Opper catalog rather than Claude alone.

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Setup

1

Enable Developer mode

In Cowork’s Help menu, click Enable Developer Mode, then quit and restart the app. A new Developer menu appears in the menu bar.
2

Open the third-party inference dialog

From the Developer menu, choose Configure Third-party inference, then Gateway (Anthropic-compatible).
3

Add the gateway

Click Apply locally to try it on your own machine, or Export to ship the same configuration as an MDM profile (.mobileconfig for macOS, .reg for Windows) for a team-wide rollout.

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Choosing a model

Add models to Cowork by their Opper IDs and they appear in its picker. With no model-access rule set, your key reaches the whole catalog; a rule narrows it. A reasonable starting set: Once a model is added on the Opper side, it shows up in the Cowork picker on your next conversation. You can switch mid-session without losing chat history.

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Verify

Send any message. The status indicator at the bottom-left should read Cowork 3P | Gateway — that’s how you know the request routed through Opper rather than going to Anthropic directly. From there, calls appear in traces with model, latency, and tokens.

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Troubleshooting

Cowork needs a full quit and restart after enabling Developer Mode — closing the window isn’t enough.
Cowork lists the models you entered in the third-party inference dialog — it does not fetch the catalog. Add at least one model ID there. If a model you added is rejected, check your model-access rules aren’t denying it.
The gateway config didn’t apply. Re-open Developer → Configure Third-party inference and confirm the auth scheme is bearer.

Claude Desktop

Anthropic’s desktop app, wired by the Opper CLI.

Retention rules

Pin residency and retention for knowledge work.