A comprehensive guide to Claude Cowork, Anthropic's agentic AI research preview that executes multi-step autonomous tasks locally in a sandboxed Linux VM while sending inference to the cloud, with coverage of setup, architecture, MCP connectors, global instructions customization, and real-world workflows.
Geoffrey Huntley discusses how AI is reshaping software development versus engineering, arguing that traditional coding skills are becoming commoditized while software engineering (focused on safe systems design, risk management, and automation loops) remains valuable. He contends that open-source is declining due to AI-generated code, vendor lock-in is eroding, and true competitive moats now lie in business factors rather than technical differentiation.
A test harness that implements a pre-execution authorization layer for AI actions, analyzing requests for sensitive signals (financial operations, external communications, data exports, system modifications) and determining PASS/DENY based on required authorization levels with auditable logging.