Claude Cowork vs Copilot Cowork plugins: same idea, different packaging
Anthropic and Microsoft both call their agentic workspace "Cowork", and both use plugins. Here is what carries over between them and what does not.
Two products are called “Cowork”. Claude Cowork is Anthropic’s agentic workspace in the Claude app. Copilot Cowork is Microsoft’s, built with Anthropic and running inside Microsoft 365. Both can be extended with plugins, and both use the same underlying idea: package instructions and tool access so the AI behaves like a specialist for your role, team or company.
If you build plugins, or are choosing between the two, this is what you need to know.
What a plugin is in each product
Claude Cowork. Anthropic introduced Cowork plugins on 30 January 2026. A plugin can bundle four things:
- Skills: domain knowledge Claude applies automatically when it’s relevant
- Connectors: MCP connections to your tools, such as your CRM or knowledge base
- Slash commands: actions you trigger yourself, like
/sales:call-prep - Sub-agents: specialised helpers for parts of a task
Everything is file-based, so plugins are easy to read, edit, version and share. Anthropic open-sourced eleven starter plugins (Sales, Finance, Legal, Marketing, Customer support, Product management, Data, Productivity, Enterprise search, Biology research, and a plugin for creating plugins) in its knowledge-work-plugins repository.
Copilot Cowork. Microsoft’s plugins contain skills and connectors, packaged as a standard Microsoft 365 app package (a manifest.json plus a skills/ folder) and deployed by an admin through the Microsoft 365 admin center. See our Copilot Cowork plugins guide for the details.
Side by side
| Claude Cowork | Copilot Cowork | |
|---|---|---|
Skills (SKILL.md) | Yes | Yes, same format |
| Connectors (MCP) | Yes | Yes (Streamable HTTP over HTTPS) |
| Slash commands | Yes | Not yet supported |
| Sub-agents | Yes | Not yet supported |
| Hooks | Supported in Claude’s plugin format | Not yet supported |
| Packaging | Plugin folder | Microsoft 365 app package (.zip + manifest) |
| Distribution | Install in Cowork, or upload your own | Microsoft 365 admin center, Microsoft 365 App Store |
| Governance | Anthropic plans and admin settings | Microsoft 365 admin, Purview, Copilot Credit limits |
| Data it sees best | What you connect | Your Microsoft 365 graph, plus what you connect |
What carries over
The good news is that skills are portable. A well-written SKILL.md with a clear name, a description full of trigger phrases and step-by-step instructions works in both products. MCP connectors are portable too, as long as they meet Microsoft’s transport and authentication requirements. Microsoft documents a conversion path that imports a Claude plugin’s skills and .mcp.json.
What doesn’t carry over today is slash commands, sub-agents and hooks. If your Claude plugin relies on them, move that logic into skill instructions, or into the connector itself, before targeting Copilot Cowork.
Which should you build for?
- Your organisation runs on Microsoft 365 and wants central governance, Purview coverage and billing through Copilot Credits: build for Copilot Cowork.
- You want the richest plugin model today (commands, sub-agents) or your team works mainly in Claude: build for Claude Cowork.
- You need both: keep skills and MCP servers as the shared core, and package them twice. Writing the skill once and reusing it is the real advantage of a shared format.
We design portable skills and MCP connectors that work in both. Start a conversation.
Sources: Customize Cowork with plugins (Anthropic, January 2026) · anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins (GitHub) · Build plugins for Copilot Cowork (Microsoft Learn)