Claude Desktop – New and Improved Tools. Integration? Coming ……..

Claude on the Mac
See the 3 new tools run *
(* just like the 3 blind mice)

When Three Tools in One App Doesn’t Mean What You Think

Anthropic gave us Claude Desktop with three powerful capabilities: Chat for conversations, Code for development, Cowork for file management. Three tools, one app, built right into the desktop experience.

I opened it expecting what anyone would expect: tools that work together.

That’s when I discovered what “three tools in one app” actually means: they’re in the same window. That’s it.

The Three-Headed Snake That Can’t Find Its Own Tails

Here’s what Claude Desktop actually delivers: three powerful tools that can’t see each other.

Not because something broke. Not because they haven’t finished building it yet. This is what they shipped. On purpose. As a “research preview.”

Want Code to access your carefully organized Projects from Chat? Those live in Chat’s universe. Code has never been there.

Need Cowork to use something you discussed in Chat five minutes ago? Start copying and pasting. Cowork wasn’t listening. Cowork is never listening.

Integration wasn’t the goal. Getting them to talk to each other? That’s apparently a future feature.

The Obvious Question Nobody Thought to Ask

I discovered this limitation doing something radical: I tried to use them together.

“Code, can you access my Projects?”

“No.”

That’s when I understood. These aren’t three modes of one tool. They’re three separate tools that happen to share a window frame.

The documentation is clear about this. It’s listed under “known limitations.” Projects don’t work in Cowork. Context doesn’t transfer between modes. You can’t switch between tools mid-conversation.

They told us exactly what it doesn’t do. What they didn’t tell us is why we’d want three powerful tools that can’t collaborate with each other.

Built Fast, And It Shows

Cowork was built in ten days. AI wrote 100% of the code. The speed is genuinely impressive.

But the speed was the feature. Ship fast. Get the proof-of-concept into users’ hands. Beat competitors to market with agentic file management.

Nobody’s hiding that this is a research preview. The limitations are documented. The fragmentation is listed right there in the feature descriptions.

The question isn’t whether they told us. It’s whether “three tools in one app” now means “three separate tools you manually coordinate yourself.”

What Working Together Would Actually Look Like

Here’s what I expected from three AI tools in one application:

You’re in Chat, working through a problem. You realize you need file access. You say “move this to Cowork” and the entire context transfers. You pick up exactly where you left off, but now with file system access.

Or: You’ve built up Project knowledge over dozens of conversations. Code can see that. Cowork can see that. Your work compounds instead of fragmenting.

Or: You have context that persists across all three modes so you’re not constantly re-explaining yourself to different versions of the same AI.

That’s collaboration. Context flows between tools. Knowledge persists across modes. The system does the coordination work.

What Claude Desktop actually delivers: three powerful agents in one window that have never met each other. You get to be the coordination layer. You get to copy, paste, re-explain, and manually transfer context between tools that can’t share a conversation.

They didn’t build collaborative tools. They built three separate tools and made you the middleware.

The Meta-Twist: Living the Dysfunction

And here’s where it gets beautifully absurd.

I had this entire conversation discovering that Chat, Code, and Cowork don’t share context. Great material for an LNNA article, I thought.

Then I realized: to write that article in my LNNA Project, I’d have to manually copy-paste this conversation out of Chat tab.

Because Projects don’t work across tabs.

So to document how these three tools can’t communicate with each other, I had to manually transfer information between them because they can’t communicate with each other.

Then another AI sent me corrections from a different chat window. Because chat windows can’t see each other either.

The three blind mice aren’t just running in circles. They’re chasing their own tails while I play messenger between AI instances that live in the same application.

Three Tools Running. Separately.

The ellipses in my title aren’t stylistic. They’re a timeline.

Right now, “three tools in one app” means they share a window. Which is technically accurate. Three capabilities. One desktop application. Check.

What it doesn’t mean: they share context, knowledge, or memory. They don’t know about each other’s work. They can’t hand off tasks. They can’t build on each other’s outputs.

That’s not collaboration. That’s cohabitation.

Code doesn’t know what you discussed in Chat. Chat doesn’t know what files Cowork is managing. Cowork doesn’t know either of them exist. They’re running in parallel universes that happen to share a window frame.

And somewhere, yes, someone at Anthropic is probably working on getting these tools to actually work together. Hence the ellipses. It’s coming.

In the meantime, enjoy your three blind mice. They’re powerful. They run great. They just can’t run together.

So you get to do that part yourself. Every single time.

Logic to Apply

When tech companies give you multiple tools in one application, ask:

“Can I start work in one tool and continue it in another with context intact?”
“Do these tools share knowledge, or do I have to explain myself three times?”
“Am I coordinating the tools, or are they coordinating with each other?”

If the answer is “you’re the middleware,” you don’t have collaborative tools. You have separate tools that happen to share real estate.

Which is fine. Separate tools can be powerful. Just don’t expect them to work together and then act surprised when they don’t.

Because three tools in one window isn’t the same as one integrated workspace. It’s three separate workspaces you get to integrate yourself.

Welcome to LNNA. Where the three blind mice keep running, and I’ll keep copying, pasting, and playing messenger between AI tools that live in the same app but have never been introduced.

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Editor’s Note: I smile as Jojo gave me that “Yea AGI is right around the corner” look. I wondered if blind mice would know when they get to that corner.

Editor’s Note 2: Good thing I learned to be good at cut and paste as a graduate assistant creating tests. Honed my using AIs skills. This article required more than 10 cuts/pastes.