cowork

name	cowork
description	Multi-persona layer for Claude Code. Per chat (or per CLI call) a different agent role: coder (default), browser, inbox, research, ... Each persona has its own tools, MCP servers, system prompt and workspace. Optional, on top of voice or standalone. Trigger when the user mentions cowork, persona, agent role, multi-agent, bind chat, /cowork-*.

cowork — personas for Claude Code

cowork is an optional plugin on top of Claude Code (and integrates automatically with voice/bridges if both are installed). It turns a single coding agent into a pool of roles that switch depending on the chat or CLI call.

Mental model

chat_profiles[<chat>].persona = "browser"
        │
        ▼
cowork.resolver.resolve("browser", overrides=chat_profile)
        │
        ▼
{cwd, mcp_servers, tools, append_system, permission_mode}
        │
        ▼
claude --mcp-config ... --append-system-prompt ... --add-dir ...

What you, as Claude, need to know

• Personas live in JSON files under operator/cowork/personas/ (bundle) or ~/.config/claude-cowork/personas/ (user; shadows the bundle).
• Schema: name, description, permission_mode, allowed_tools, disallowed_tools, append_system, model, mcp_servers (dict in Claude Code MCP config format), add_dirs (list), needs_keys, needs_oauth, zero_config (bool).
• Voice integration is additive: chat_profiles[<chat>].persona = "..." is a new optional field next to permission_mode / allowed_tools / etc. Profile fields merge on top of the persona (lists union, scalars overwrite, append_system concatenates).
• Hot-reload remains: the persona file is read fresh per inbox message, no restart needed.
• Standalone: cowork run <persona> -p "..." runs claude locally without involving voice/bridges.

When the user asks ...

• "which personas do I have" → /cowork-list
• "what can persona X do" → /cowork-show X
• "make this chat the browser persona" → /cowork-bind <channel> <chat> browser
• "undo that" → /cowork-unbind <channel> <chat>
• "I want to give inbox its own MCP servers" → /cowork-add inbox (copies it into the user dir, then edit)
• "test browser persona without the bridge" → /cowork-run browser -p "..."

What NOT to do

• Never set chat_profiles.default.persona without an explicit request — that would reroute every chat (same footgun rule as for chat_profiles.default in the voice plugin).
• Never claim a persona "is running" when mcp_servers is empty and needs_oauth / needs_keys are not satisfied. Give a setup hint instead.