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What Claude Cowork is, and how to start.

We are all busy, and most of us do not have an assistant. The work still piles up, and a lot of it is not hard. It is scut, the small repetitive work that quietly eats an afternoon.

That part you can now hand to AI, but only if you know how to use it. This page is the short version of how. The other guides on this site are worked examples once you are set up.

Claude is not the only tool that does this. ChatGPT and Gemini do similar things, and they are fine. I started with Claude, so it is what I know best, and it is what these guides use. I may fold in NotebookLM pieces later, but for now the focus is Claude.

The whole path, in one view

1
Open ClaudeWeb, desktop, or phone
2
Switch to CoworkIn the message box
3
Connect your stuffFiles and apps
4
Give it a taskIn plain words
5
It does the workPlan first

Twenty minutes to set up. After that you are describing a job in a sentence and getting finished work back.

1

What it actually is

Claude Cowork is a mode of Claude made by Anthropic, and it sits in the same message box as the chat. The ordinary chat answers a question. Cowork does the job. You give it an outcome, it works on the files and apps you allow, and it hands back finished work.

It is the difference between asking how to do something and having it done. It can read and write your files, build documents, search the web, and run a sequence of steps on its own, not one reply at a time.

The thing that makes it safe to use is that it shows you a plan before it acts, and it asks before it deletes anything. You stay in front of every change that matters. More on that at the end.

2

What you need

Not much, and only one thing costs money. Worth being clear up front so you do not hit a wall.

  • A paid Claude plan. Cowork is on the paid tiers, Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise. It is not on the free plan. Current pricing is at claude.com/pricing.
  • Any Claude app. Cowork runs on the web at claude.ai, in the desktop app, and in the phone app. The desktop app is only required when a task needs something that lives on your computer, a folder of files or your browser, because that is how Cowork reaches it. On an Enterprise plan the web and phone versions depend on your admin turning them on.

Where the work happens

The task runs on Anthropic's servers, not on your computer, and the session is saved to your Claude account. So you can start a task on the laptop, check on it from your phone, and it keeps going after you close the lid. The one exception is a task that uses a folder on your computer. For that, the desktop app has to be open, because the folder is on the machine and that is the only way in.

3

Open it and turn it on

  1. Open Claude. On the web that is claude.ai, signed in on a paid plan. If you want Cowork to work on folders on your computer, also install the desktop app from claude.com/download, or update it if you already have it.
  2. Find the message box. Next to it is a selector with two choices, Chat and Cowork.
  3. Select Cowork. The same box now takes a task instead of a question. Select Chat to go back to a normal conversation.
  4. You do not need to keep anything open. The task runs on Anthropic's servers and continues if you close the app or the laptop goes to sleep. Keep the desktop app open only for a task that uses your local files or your browser, because those are on your computer and Cowork reaches them through the app.
4

Connect your files and apps

Cowork can only touch what you hand it. That is the point. You decide what it sees, and it sees nothing else.

There are two kinds of access:

Your folders

Point it at a folder on your computer and it can read and edit the files inside. It cannot reach anything outside the folders you give it. This is the one part that needs the desktop app.

Your apps

Connect tools through connectors: your calendar, your email, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and more. Add only the ones a task needs.

Start with one folder and one app. You can always add more later from the same settings, and disconnect any of them just as easily.

5

What you can hand it

The honest test for a good Cowork task is this: would it take you an hour of clicking and copying, but no real judgment? That is exactly the work to delegate.

  • Clean up and organize files. Sort a messy Downloads folder by type and date, rename a batch of files to a consistent format, turn a pile of receipts into one expense sheet.
  • Make things from rough material. Turn scattered notes into a clean Word document, an Excel sheet with working formulas, or a set of slides.
  • Pull and synthesize. Gather information from the web, your files, and your notes into one summary you can actually use.
  • Run jobs on a schedule. Set a task to run on its own, every morning or every week, and hand you the result.

A good first task to feel how it works, paste it in once your folder is connected:

Try this
Organize my [Downloads] folder. Sort the files into subfolders by type, and rename each one with its date in front, as YYYY-MM-DD. Show me your plan before you move anything.

Two of these jobs already have their own step-by-step guide on this site:

GuideBuild a morning briefOne short brief that lands every morning, on its own. GuideKeep your CV currentNew papers pulled for you, formatted any way you need.
6

You stay in control

This is the part that should make you comfortable handing over real work. Cowork is built so you are never surprised by what it did.

  • It shows a plan first. Before it acts, you see what it intends to do, and you can change it or stop it.
  • It asks before deleting. Nothing gets permanently deleted without you clicking allow.
  • It only sees what you grant. Your folders and your connected apps, nothing else on your machine.
  • You pick how closely to watch. There are three modes, set from the message box. Manually approve stops and asks before each action. Automatically approve keeps going but checks every action for safety first and blocks anything it judges unsafe. Skip all approvals does neither, and I would not use it.

Start in Manually approve. Watch it do a few small jobs. Once you have seen it think, you will know which tasks you are happy to move to Automatically approve.

Where to start

Do not try to automate your whole life on day one. Pick one piece of scut you do every week, hand it over, and watch how it goes. The point is not to replace your judgment. It is to take the work that never needed your judgment off your plate, so the time goes to the work that does.

When you are set up, the other guides walk through specific jobs end to end.

More guides as I build them. They go out through RadBrief.

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