ChatGPT Work vs Claude Cowork, with an open-source option

Two closed agents, defined

ChatGPT Work is OpenAI's agent inside ChatGPT. You give it a goal and it works across your connected apps and files, then returns finished material such as sheets, slides, docs and sites. Claude Cowork is Anthropic's agent inside Claude. It works in the folders and tools you point it at and completes multi-step tasks while you watch each step. Both are closed products tied to one vendor's account, cloud and models.

What you hand over when the agent is closed

Once your work sits inside ChatGPT Work or Claude Cowork, three choices stay with the vendor. The host stays with them: neither product offers a self-hosted install, though Cowork can run on your own Amazon, Google or Microsoft cloud account. The model stays with them: ChatGPT Work runs on OpenAI's models, and Cowork runs on Anthropic's. The configuration stays with them: the agents, skills and prompts you build live inside the vendor's product.

For one person that trade is reasonable. For a team, it is the part that decides how much of the work you keep.

The open-source option your team can own

Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector in one git repo you own, with the agents working on real cloud computers. Where the two closed agents hold your setup inside their product, Kortix keeps it as text you can read, diff and roll back.

# kortix.yamlagents:  support-triage:    file: agents/support-triage.md   # what it does, in plain markdown    connectors: all                  # what it may reach

That manifest is from Kortix on GitHub. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. Self-host is free. Any model provider with your own keys. Or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for. One isolated sandbox per session. Each session has its own isolated machine and branch. Session work reaches main through a change request. Merge is default-deny for agents. Approval gates you set. Off until you set them.

How to choose between them

• Pick ChatGPT Work when the work is a deck, a sheet or a report that starts from ChatGPT context and the team already pays for a plan.
• Pick Claude Cowork when the work runs on files and folders you already keep in your own cloud account.
• Pick Kortix when you want the agents, skills, memory and connectors in a git repo your team controls, on any model, self-hosted or managed. ChatGPT Work vs Kortix takes that comparison further.

The Kortix team's own Kortix vs Claude Cowork write-up goes deeper on the desktop assistant question.