Key Takeaways
- Anthropic launched private plugin marketplaces, letting admins build, distribute, and control AI agents across teams
- Claude now orchestrates multi-step tasks across Excel and PowerPoint, passing context between apps end-to-end
- New department-specific plugins cover HR, engineering, finance, equity research, private equity, and design workflows
- OpenTelemetry support gives admins real-time visibility into usage, costs, and tool activity across the organization
Anthropic just made its most significant enterprise move yet. Claude Cowork’s February 2026 update does not just add features; it repositions Claude as a configurable infrastructure layer that enterprises can shape to their exact operational workflows.
This is what separates it from generic AI assistants. The update gives IT admins, department heads, and knowledge workers a unified system to build, manage, and deploy AI agents that follow how their organization actually works, not a one-size-fits-all chatbot.
Here is a complete breakdown of every confirmed change in this release and what it means for real teams.
Private Plugin Marketplaces: Enterprise-Grade Control Arrives
The most consequential shift in this release is the introduction of private plugin marketplaces. Admins can now build custom plugins from starter templates or from scratch, with Claude guiding setup by asking questions to tailor skills, commands, and connectors (MCPs) to the company’s specific needs.
All plugin management now lives inside a unified menu called “Customize,” consolidating plugins, skills, and connectors into a single dashboard. This eliminates the scattered admin experience that enterprise IT teams previously navigated across multiple settings panels.
Per-user provisioning and auto-install capabilities mean admins can push the right tools to the right teams without manual onboarding. Private GitHub repositories as plugin sources are available in private beta, giving engineering teams the ability to version-control and audit every plugin deployed organization-wide.
New Connectors Across Major Enterprise Platforms
Cowork’s value multiplies when it connects to the tools teams already use daily. The February 2026 update adds connectors for Google Workspace (Calendar, Drive, Gmail), Docusign, Apollo, Clay, Outreach, Similarweb, MSCI, LegalZoom, FactSet, WordPress, and Harvey.
Companies including Slack by Salesforce, LSEG, S&P Global, Apollo, Common Room, and Tribe AI have also built plugins for joint customers. These are designed to let Claude take action inside connected tools, not just read from them.
The connector directory has been overhauled with streamlined admin controls, and bundling connectors directly into plugins gives admins a cleaner deployment model. A finance team’s plugin can ship pre-connected to FactSet without requiring end-users to configure anything.
Department Plugins Built With Practitioners
Anthropic designed each new role-specific plugin with practitioners in the relevant field, so terminology, workflows, and outputs reflect how work actually gets done.
The new plugin library covers:
- HR: Draft offer letters, build onboarding plans, write performance reviews, and run compensation analyses
- Design: Generate critique frameworks, draft UX copy, run accessibility audits, and structure user research plans
- Engineering: Write standup summaries, coordinate incident response, build deploy checklists, and draft postmortems
- Operations: Handle process documentation, vendor evaluations, change request tracking, and runbook creation
- Financial Analysis: Market research, competitive analysis, financial modeling, and PowerPoint template creation and quality checking
- Investment Banking: Review transaction documents, build comparable company analyses, and prepare pitch materials
- Equity Research: Parse earnings transcripts, update financial models with new guidance, and draft research notes
- Private Equity: Review large document sets, extract standardized financial data, model scenarios, and score investment opportunities against criteria
- Wealth Management: Analyze portfolios, identify drift and tax exposure, and generate rebalancing recommendations at scale
- Brand Voice (by Tribe AI): Analyze existing documents and marketing materials to distill brand voice into enforceable guidelines
Each plugin functions as a portable file system the organization owns. Plugins work across Cowork and anything built on the Claude Agent SDK, making it straightforward to create private marketplaces across teams and with industry experts.
Claude Works Across Excel and PowerPoint
Claude can now handle multi-step tasks end-to-end across Excel and PowerPoint, using and passing context from one Office add-in to the other. This makes it possible to assign Claude larger projects, such as running an analysis in Excel and turning the results directly into a PowerPoint presentation.
Anthropic describes this as an early research preview that points toward Claude working across apps the way people do. It is available for all paid plans on Mac and Windows after downloading the Claude add-in for Excel and the Claude add-in for PowerPoint separately.
PwC’s Anthropic Alliance Leader Sanjay Subramanian framed the direction clearly: the partnership aims to bring enterprise-grade agents into the office of the CFO, enabling finance teams to do more ambitious work, make better decisions, and grow the business in ways not previously possible. Mark Hines, COO of Blank Metal, added that what Anthropic built goes well beyond the discrete workflow automation the market had been expecting.
Slash Commands and User Experience Redesign
Slash commands now launch with structured forms, making workflow execution feel closer to filling out a brief than typing a terminal command. Complex workflows like “generate report” or “dashboard” become accessible to non-technical users without compromising capability depth.
Cowork also now features company branding throughout, including a redesigned home experience tailored to each organization. Company branding and provisioning controls are available to Team and Enterprise plan admins.
OpenTelemetry support rounds out the admin toolkit, giving teams the ability to track usage, costs, and tool activity across the organization in real time. This is the audit capability that IT and compliance teams require before approving any enterprise software deployment.
Availability and Access
All user experience updates for plugins are available to all Cowork users immediately. Team and Enterprise plan admins can access company branding, per-user provisioning, and MCP connector controls.
The Excel and PowerPoint cross-app capability is in early research preview for all paid plans on Mac and Windows. Private GitHub repositories as plugin sources remain in private beta and require direct contact with Anthropic’s enterprise team. Organizations focused on financial services can find additional deployment guidance in Anthropic’s companion blog post covering that vertical.
Considerations
The cross-app Excel and PowerPoint integration is an early research preview, not a production-ready feature. Anthropic explicitly positions it as a directional signal for where Claude is heading, rather than a finished capability. Teams evaluating the financial analysis or investment banking plugins should validate output accuracy against established internal workflows before replacing manual review processes. The private GitHub repository feature remains in private beta, limiting immediate access for engineering teams seeking self-service plugin pipeline management today.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is Claude Cowork and how does it differ from standard Claude?
Claude Cowork is Anthropic’s enterprise workspace that layers role-specific plugins, connectors, and admin controls on top of Claude. Unlike the standard chat interface, Cowork lets organizations configure Claude with custom workflows, private marketplaces, and department-specific agents built around their own terminology and processes.
Who can access the new enterprise plugin features in February 2026?
All plugin user experience updates are available to all Cowork users. Company branding, per-user provisioning, and MCP connector controls require a Team or Enterprise plan. Cross-app Excel and PowerPoint integration is available as an early research preview for all paid plans on Mac and Windows.
What new connectors were added in the February 2026 update?
New connectors include Google Workspace (Calendar, Drive, Gmail), Docusign, Apollo, Clay, Outreach, Similarweb, MSCI, LegalZoom, FactSet, WordPress, and Harvey. Companies including Slack by Salesforce, LSEG, S&P Global, Apollo, Common Room, and Tribe AI have also built plugins for joint enterprise customers.
How does the Excel to PowerPoint cross-app feature work?
Claude runs a data analysis inside Excel, then uses the context from that add-in to build a presentation in PowerPoint. The full workflow runs as a single assigned project. Users need to download both the Claude add-in for Excel and the Claude add-in for PowerPoint separately to enable this capability.
Can organizations build their own plugins for Claude Cowork?
Yes. Admins can build plugins from starter templates or from scratch, with Claude guiding setup interactively. Plugins are file-based and available on GitHub. Private GitHub repositories as plugin sources are currently in private beta. Organizations can also set up private marketplaces to distribute custom plugins across teams.
What is OpenTelemetry support in Claude Cowork and why does it matter?
OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability standard. Anthropic’s integration lets admins track plugin usage, AI tool activity, and cost data across the organization in a format compatible with existing monitoring infrastructure. This addresses a core requirement for enterprise IT and compliance teams evaluating AI deployment at scale.
What does the Brand Voice plugin by Tribe AI do?
The Brand Voice plugin analyzes an organization’s existing documents, marketing materials, and conversations to extract voice patterns and distill them into clear, enforceable brand guidelines. It gives content and marketing teams consistent AI output that matches established brand standards.
When did Anthropic first launch Cowork and plugin support?
Anthropic launched Cowork as a research preview on January 12, 2026, and introduced plugin support on January 30, 2026. The February 24, 2026 update expanded this with private marketplaces, new connectors, and cross-app Excel and PowerPoint capability.
