CoworkOS:Scaling Agent Coworkers for Real-world Automation

Rapid advances in cowork agents are shifting human-AI collaboration toward real-world automation, delivering software, designs, and other artifacts. However, such productivity work demands both high-quality delivery on complex productivity tasks and continued monitoring and decision-making over long horizons, a combination that remains an open challenge. We introduce CoworkOS, a general-purpose harness for long-horizon work that separates task strategy from execution management: the model decides actions, delegation, and acceptance, while the runtime maintains state and feedback. Its three-layer architecture enables direct execution or delegation to Subagents, synchronously or asynchronously, under stable responsibilities. Through a shared application layer, humans and agents inspect and revise the same evolving documents, presentations, CAD models, and Blender scenes, so human-in-the-loop participation can enter both through conversation and through direct modification of the work itself. To sustain continuity across agents and sessions, CoworkOS further introduces hierarchical workspaces and persistent semantic memory, so working files, key decisions, and long-running Job logs remain shareable, reusable, and resumable after interruption. Across 12 benchmarks and 6 categories of real-world applications, CoworkOS proves highly competitive with frontier agent applications such as Codex and DeepSeek Harness. As a sustained-work case study, CoworkOS uses GLM-5.3 as its backbone to conduct RSI-driven automated post-training on Qwen3.6-35B-A3B. Over five rounds, the model's average score across eight benchmarks rose from 33.19 to 42.95 (+9.76). Looking ahead, we believe CoworkOS opens a meaningful path toward general cowork-agent intelligence.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
arXiv (Cornell University)
Published
2026-11-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2611.03178
Primary Topic
Artificial Intelligence Applications
Type
preprint
Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
preprint

CoworkOS:Scaling Agent Coworkers for Real-world Automation

Guanting Dong, Zhicheng Dou, Zhiheng Xi, Shihan Dou et al.
arXiv (Cornell University)
Artificial Intelligence Applications
preprint

CoworkOS:Scaling Agent Coworkers for Real-world Automation

Guanting Dong, Zhicheng Dou, Zhiheng Xi, Shihan Dou, Tat‐Seng Chua, See-Kiong Ng, Binze Hu, Chengjun Pan, Huicheng Jiang, Jiahang Lin, Tao Gui, Zhuohui Sheng, Yulun Zhu, Mingyu Ma, Shihong Yi, Zhichao Sun, Wanghan Xu, Honglin Guo, Yu-Gang Jiang, Guoqiang Wang, Junhao Huang, Rui Wang, Xinyu Yang, Xiaotao Wang, Yujia Chen, Zhecan Wang, Qi Zhang, Yang Zhang, Yutao Zhu, Yuyang Hu, Xiaoqian Zhang, Jiajie Jin, Yajie Yang, Shaofan Liu, Zhixiong Yang, Ji-Rong Wen, Han Han, Xin Deng, Xiaoyu Xing, Xiaoxi Li
preprint en

Abstract

Rapid advances in cowork agents are shifting human-AI collaboration toward real-world automation, delivering software, designs, and other artifacts. However, such productivity work demands both high-quality delivery on complex productivity tasks and continued monitoring and decision-making over long horizons, a combination that remains an open challenge. We introduce CoworkOS, a general-purpose harness for long-horizon work that separates task strategy from execution management: the model decides actions, delegation, and acceptance, while the runtime maintains state and feedback. Its three-layer architecture enables direct execution or delegation to Subagents, synchronously or asynchronously, under stable responsibilities. Through a shared application layer, humans and agents inspect and revise the same evolving documents, presentations, CAD models, and Blender scenes, so human-in-the-loop participation can enter both through conversation and through direct modification of the work itself. To sustain continuity across agents and sessions, CoworkOS further introduces hierarchical workspaces and persistent semantic memory, so working files, key decisions, and long-running Job logs remain shareable, reusable, and resumable after interruption. Across 12 benchmarks and 6 categories of real-world applications, CoworkOS proves highly competitive with frontier agent applications such as Codex and DeepSeek Harness. As a sustained-work case study, CoworkOS uses GLM-5.3 as its backbone to conduct RSI-driven automated post-training on Qwen3.6-35B-A3B. Over five rounds, the model's average score across eight benchmarks rose from 33.19 to 42.95 (+9.76). Looking ahead, we believe CoworkOS opens a meaningful path toward general cowork-agent intelligence.

arXiv (Cornell University)
Artificial Intelligence Applications
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.

Laika access coming soon