MechanismArticle
The naming of AI agent modes across ChatGPT and Claude is confusing and inconsistent, with Work, Codex, Cowork, and Code not mapping cleanly between platforms.
Ethan Mollick explains that ChatGPT's two agent modes are Work and Codex while Claude's are Cowork and Code, with names that don't map across platforms and desktop versions having more capabilities than mobile. ✦ AI generated
Ethan Mollick · Simon Willison's Weblog · 2026-07-27 · original ↗
To use the computers provided by the AI companies, the mode you want is called ChatGPT Work in ChatGPT, and Cowork in Claude (the naming will not get less confusing, I am sorry to say). [...] The most powerful way to use AI is to give it access to your computer. You do that by downloading the ChatGPT or Claude apps and picking a mode to use. ChatGPT's two agent modes are Work and Codex; Claude's are Cowork and Code. The names do not map onto each other in any way that will help you remember them. And yes, these use the same names as the Work and Cowork modes we discussed above, but operate differently, and have more features and capabilities because they can access your computer.
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In practice · 2
The difference between ChatGPT Work on mobile versus the desktop app is spectacularly unintuitive — mobile Work mode simply grants the Code Interpreter unrestricted internet access rather than providing agentic capabilities.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 85%Claude's edit tool is built around search-and-replace, whereas OpenAI's Codex uses an apply_patch mechanism instead, and OpenAI has publicly discussed training its models specifically to use that apply_patch tool well.Simon Willison · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 80%
Context · 3
The most important shift in AI tool usage over the past year has been from conversational chat interfaces to agentic systems that can perform many hours of human work autonomously.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 70%The most important evolution in AI over the past year is the shift from conversational chat to agentic systems that can autonomously perform hours of human work.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 70%Claude Tag is Claude Code made multiplayer, async, and proactive across the whole team, while Claude Code itself remains the fastest mode for solo, synchronous work.Anthropic Claude Code team (@ClaudeDevs) · Latent Space · conf 70%