Cowork: keep a chosen live artifact pinned in the viewer during, across sessions and relaunch (and don't let file previews evict it)

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

In Claude Cowork (Desktop), the right-hand viewer is single-slot — it shows one thing at a time, and there's no way to keep a chosen item in it. I rely on one live artifact (a status dashboard) as an always-on reference and want it to simply stay available in the right-pane viewer. Two things prevent that:

1. After quitting/restarting Claude Desktop, the viewer comes up empty. Whatever was showing isn't restored; I have to reopen the artifact from the Live artifacts tab every launch.
2. Any file preview (e.g. when Claude surfaces a file) opens in that same single slot and replaces the artifact, with no way to mark one to stay.

Live artifacts are positioned as persistent, always-current dashboards ("open it each morning"). The data persists, but there's no way to keep the artifact present in the right-pane viewer — so the always-on-reference use case requires reopening it every session, and it's lost to any preview.

Proposed Solution

A way to keep a chosen live artifact docked in the viewer so it's there whenever I open Cowork — a pinned home panel — and isn't silently replaced. Any one of these would solve it:

• A "Keep open / Pin to viewer" toggle on a live artifact that re-docks it automatically on launch.
• Remember and restore the last-docked artifact in the viewer across app relaunch.
• Open transient file previews in a secondary slot or a dismissible overlay so they don't evict a pinned artifact; restore the pinned artifact when the preview is closed.
• Allow to pin multiple viewer windows with the ability to vertically scroll between them over the right pane (since not more than 1 fits).

Alternative Solutions

Today I reopen the artifact manually from the Live artifacts tab after every relaunch or file preview — one click, but easy to forget and it breaks flow. Pinning the artifact in the sidebar keeps it accessible but does not keep it present in the right-pane viewer. I confirmed against the official "Use live artifacts in Claude Cowork" help article that no keep-open setting currently exists.

Priority

Medium - Would be very helpful

Feature Category

Other

Use Case Example

1. I keep a live-artifact dashboard as my always-on status board and open it in the right-hand viewer.
2. I quit Claude Desktop at the end of the day.
3. Next morning I reopen Claude Desktop → the viewer is empty; I have to open the Live artifacts tab and click the dashboard again to bring it back into the viewer.
4. Later, Claude surfaces a file in the viewer → the dashboard is replaced, and I have to reopen it again.

With a way to keep a chosen artifact present in the viewer, the dashboard would simply be there on launch and survive previews — making the persistent-workspace promise actually hold in the UI.

Additional Context

Environment: Claude Desktop (Windows), Cowork, Max plan. Live artifacts GA April 2026.

Possibly related (different issue): #51426 — Cowork "Live Artifacts" sidebar entry point appears once, then disappears on relaunch.