What happened
Anthropic launched Dispatch for Claude Cowork on March 17, 2026 in research preview. Dispatch creates a single persistent conversation thread between the Claude mobile app and Claude Desktop. Users text instructions from their phone, and Claude executes tasks on the desktop — reading files, running connectors, and working in the sandbox — with the same conversation context available on both devices simultaneously.
Why it matters
This is the first major AI assistant to ship a cross-device persistent agent thread where the desktop does the heavy lifting while the phone acts as a remote control. For developers, it means kicking off long-running tasks (code generation, file refactoring, data processing) from your phone and returning to completed work on your desktop. The pattern of asynchronous AI delegation — assign and forget — could reshape how developers interact with coding assistants outside of active IDE sessions.
Who should pay attention
- Developers who use Claude Code or Claude Desktop for daily work
- Teams evaluating AI assistant workflows for async task delegation
- Product managers designing cross-device AI experiences