Meet the Electron Co-Maintainer Who Built Claude Cowork

Anthropic recently launched Claude Cowork, an AI "intern" that can take over a computer's file system and handle various chores, extending the capabilities of the earlier Claude Code.

Investigation shows the product is led by Felix Rieseberg, a core maintainer of Electron and the original creator of the Slack desktop app. His work on Electron helped define the desktop software paradigm for tools like VS Code, Discord, and Notion.

Rieseberg is now applying that expertise to define AI‑era desktop software with Claude Cowork.

The idea originated when the team noticed Claude Code, originally built for programmers, being used by non‑technical users, blurring the line between developer and consumer tools. After months of researching "Agentic Experiences," a teammate (@bcherny) challenged Felix to produce a simplified version quickly, setting an aggressive deadline of the following Monday.

Felix later explained, "@claudeai wrote Cowork," indicating that the AI itself generated much of the code. The team manages three to eight Claude instances to implement features, fix bugs, and explore solutions. For pure code changes they use local Git worktrees; for minor tweaks they instruct Claude directly; when a bug is reported on Slack they @‑mention Claude to handle it.

"Most of our time is spent orchestrating a fleet of Claudes rather than hand‑coding each line," the team noted, emphasizing the shift from manual coding to AI‑driven orchestration.

This creates a meta‑narrative: a group of people who can write code and manage AI built a tool to manage AI.

Felix argues that a desktop approach is essential because web‑based AI is isolated—it cannot see local PDFs, screenshots, or write files back to disk. To be a true coworker, the AI must have a file‑system perspective, meaning it must be able to open folders, read local Git repositories, and modify local files.

Open your folders

Read your local Git repositories

Modify local files directly

No one understands these requirements better than an Electron expert.

"Cowork is still an early version with many rough edges, but figuring out what to build is getting harder, so we believe releasing early and listening to real user needs is the right path," Felix said.