If I accidentally ask Claude to produce a file inside an incognito chat, what happens?
According to Anthropic's documentation, incognito chat opens the previous experience, meaning Claude doesn't have file-creation capability there at all — it's not a case of "capability is limited, output quality is lower," the feature simply doesn't exist inside incognito chat to begin with. What's more likely to happen is Claude responding in text, or telling you it can't produce a file in this particular conversation mode, rather than producing a broken or malformed file.
If you genuinely need an actual file, the more practical move is moving the task to a regular (non-incognito) chat and re-describing what you need there, so Claude handles it in an environment that has file-production capability. If your concern is not wanting a record of this interaction to persist in a regular chat, that means the two things you originally wanted — staying incognito and getting a file produced — can't both be satisfied under the current architecture, and you'll need to reassess which one matters more to you.
Does the limitation on "can't branch a conversation from an earlier point" mean I can't try two different approaches at the same time at all?
Not entirely — it just means switching to a different manual approach to achieve something similar. The original branching feature let you fork off from a specific point at the interface level, with the system automatically preserving the full context for both paths. That automated part is gone now, but you can still manually achieve a similar result: copy the background information from before the point where you wanted to branch, start a brand-new conversation, paste that context in, and continue from there in the new direction you wanted to try.
The difference with this manual approach is that you're now responsible for organizing the key background information clearly and bringing it over completely, rather than relying on the original branching feature to automatically preserve full context for you. If you frequently need this kind of "same starting point, multiple attempts" working style, it's worth building a habit of summarizing the current context into a saved note at key decision points, so you can just paste it in when you need to start a new branch, rather than reviewing the entire conversation from scratch each time to extract the background.
Dispatch being temporarily unavailable to new users — is this a permanent policy, or might it reopen later?
Anthropic's documentation only describes the current state — unavailable to new users, existing users can keep using it — without further clarifying whether this is a permanent decision or something that'll reopen to new users later. Since this merger itself is a staged architectural rollout, a reasonable guess is that this current restriction on new users might be related to the staged rollout of the merge itself (say, ensuring existing users' workflows aren't disrupted first, then reconsidering opening it to new users once the new experience is more stable) — but that's purely speculation; Anthropic hasn't committed to any timeline.
If you haven't used Dispatch yet but have been wanting to try it, the more practical approach is keeping an eye on future official announcements for updates on this restriction, rather than assuming it'll reopen soon, and not investing time in looking for unofficial workarounds — this is a deliberately set limitation from Anthropic, not a system oversight or bug, so bypassing it through unofficial channels carries higher risk and uncertainty.
If search doesn't find older Cowork tasks and I have a large number of them, how do I efficiently find the one I need?
Anthropic's documentation notes that older tasks can still be found by name in the Recents list, meaning what you'll need to rely on is whatever name the task was originally given, rather than keyword matching through the search bar. If you had a habit of giving Cowork tasks clear, identifiable names in the past (including a date, project name, or task type, say), finding them again now is relatively easy. But if past naming was more casual — a system-generated default name, for instance — finding one among a large number of historical tasks by browsing will be relatively time-consuming.
The more practical adjustment going forward is spending a few extra seconds giving new tasks specific, easily identifiable names from now on — this habit change won't help you recover past tasks that already exist with unclear names, but it prevents the same problem from continuing to pile up before search coverage potentially expands in the future. If a specific older task genuinely matters to you and you frequently need to reference it, it's also worth summarizing its key content and saving it somewhere convenient for you to look up yourself, rather than relying entirely on Cowork's own search or browsing mechanism every time.
Now that Claude Cowork has merged into the chat interface, Anthropic's own documentation lists five specific things that still can't be done — not vague "coming eventually" caveats, but a concrete list of limitations spelled out in black and white in the same announcement. This piece walks through all five, with particular attention to the third one, incognito chats, since it's less about a missing feature and more about something that could quietly mislead a user into thinking they have the full merged experience when they actually don't.
The new merged experience currently doesn't support the "Add from GitHub" feature. That means if your workflow previously relied on that entry point to bring content from a GitHub repository into a Cowork task, that path doesn't currently work in the new experience. Anthropic doesn't offer a workaround or a timeline for when this might return — it's simply listed among the limitations. If this is a core part of your workflow, it's worth noting there's no known way around this limitation right now.
"Branching a conversation from an earlier point" also isn't available in the new experience. Previously, if you were partway through a conversation and wanted to fork off from a specific point to try a different direction while keeping the original thread going, that kind of branching had no equivalent function in the merged experience. That means if your workflow needs the more experimental setup of "same starting point, want to try two different approaches," the only current option is manually simulating it — copying and pasting the background context and starting a fresh conversation — rather than relying on a built-in branching feature.
This is the easiest of the five to overlook, but the one most likely to actually Block a workflow. Anthropic's documentation is explicit: incognito chats still work, but they open in the previous experience, meaning Claude can't create files or run code in them. In other words, incognito chat hasn't been folded into this merger at all — it stays scoped to whatever capability existed before the merger. If you're used to using incognito chat for work you don't want logged, while also needing Claude to produce files or run code, that combination doesn't currently work: switching to incognito mode automatically means giving up the file production and code execution capability that only exists in the merged experience.
Search in the merged experience currently doesn't include older Cowork tasks — it covers your regular chats and newly created conversations, but older Cowork tasks fall outside that scope. That doesn't mean those tasks have disappeared; Anthropic's documentation separately notes you can still find older tasks by name in the Recents list — it's specifically "searching directly via the search bar" that doesn't reach older tasks yet, meaning you have to browse the list and identify them by name instead. If your habit is searching by keyword to retrace past work, this limitation is worth keeping in mind, especially once the number of older tasks piles up — browsing a list for one specific item gets noticeably slower than searching.
Dispatch (the feature for assigning tasks to Cowork from anywhere) currently isn't available to new users; if you were already using it, you can keep using it. This is the only one of the five limitations handled with a differentiated approach — grandfathering existing accounts while restricting new ones — meaning it isn't a feature that's been fully removed technically, but one Anthropic has strategically paused for people who haven't used it yet, without disrupting existing users' workflows. If you haven't started using Dispatch but were curious to try it after seeing it described, that path is currently closed, with no documented application process or waitlist.
Looking at all five together, a pattern emerges: the merged experience prioritizes making the most common, everyday workflows run smoothly, while some relatively advanced or lower-frequency features (GitHub integration, conversation branching, cross-task search, Dispatch for new users) are temporarily left out of this first wave. Incognito chat is the odd one out — it's not a feature that got removed, but the entire incognito mode temporarily sitting outside this architectural upgrade, staying on whatever the previous experience offered.
If your account has already switched to the merged experience, it's worth checking your planned workflow against these five limitations before diving in — particularly if your habits include "use incognito chat for sensitive content while also needing Claude to produce a file," since that combination currently isn't possible and you'll need to decide which priority matters more. If you find your account hasn't switched over yet — your message box still shows separate Chat and Cowork options — that means your account is still running on the previous architecture, none of these five limitations apply to you right now, and you can keep working exactly as before with no need to preemptively adjust your workflow for a change that hasn't reached you yet.