Claude COWORK Clearly Explained (& how to use it for beginners)

I'll admit something straight off the bat. Even I feel overwhelmed right now

bat. Even I feel overwhelmed right now and it's literally my job to stay on top of all the newest AI tools and releases.

I struggle to keep up. So, if you're sat at home watching this, then I can only imagine it's 10 times worse trying to keep up with all of this so overwhelming. Now, in my last video, I

overwhelming. Now, in my last video, I showed you how to migrate from chat GPT to Claude. But if you're just using

to Claude. But if you're just using Claude as a chat GPT replacement and you're missing out on some of the biggest features, the biggest release recently has to be Claude Co-work. And I

want to walk you through it step by step, super simple, so you can understand it, too. How to install it, how to start using it for yourself. Even

if you feel like you're a complete AI newbie, let me show you every single step. I'll put a step-by-step guide and

step. I'll put a step-by-step guide and instructions, a link in the description below that you can get inside what I call my AI recipe vault. This has got links to pages that have all sorts of

different processes in here from step-by-step prompts to these setup and introduction guides to platforms like Co-work. Now, just a quick word on how

Co-work. Now, just a quick word on how to get access. If you want to use Claude Co-work and all of the features, then you will need a pro account, but that's $17 a month here. It's so cheap for the

amount of power you're going to get here. Trust me on this one. Now, once

here. Trust me on this one. Now, once

you've got your Pro account, if you don't have one already, you can log into Claude, you're going to see a screen like this, your main chat window. But we

need to actually download the desktop app. So, you can go to the bottom left

app. So, you can go to the bottom left of your screen and hit the download button here. This is going to bring you

button here. This is going to bring you to the page where you can download Claude desktop. It might actually say

Claude desktop. It might actually say co-work, but this is actually the full desktop suite suite for Claude. You can

get it for download for Mac OS and I believe they've download they've offered it for Windows now as well if you're a Windows user. So you can go ahead and

Windows user. So you can go ahead and download and install the Claude desktop app. Once you've downloaded it and

app. Once you've downloaded it and logged in, you're going to be met with a screen like this. Very similar to Claude. You've got the exact same chat

Claude. You've got the exact same chat window. You've got your sidebar on the

window. You've got your sidebar on the left here, your projects, your artifacts. So you can use Claude

artifacts. So you can use Claude normally from your desktop. You also get the advantage of some voice functions.

But the real winner comes in the top here where you can see it says co-work and code. So you can access this co-work

and code. So you can access this co-work feature that we're going to be talking about today as you can see here. And you

can go even deeper into clawed code, but that's a whole another level deeper.

We're going to stick in co-work for this window. So what is clawed co-work? Why

window. So what is clawed co-work? Why

is it so good? Why is it so different?

Well, it actually uses the same architecture and design as clawed code.

That's what underpins it. But if you tell someone who's not a developer to use clawed code, they're like, I don't really want to code anything. But one of the big upshots of clawed code is people

aren't actually using it to code apps so much as using it to control and run tasks on their computer. And co-work

makes it more accessible for anyone to start doing this. So if a normal LLM like the normal clawed chat function is the brain co-worker the hands that allow it to actually start reaching inside

your computer controlling your computer and execute tasks for you autonomously.

So as you can see here with co-work you can tell it what you want it to do step away and come back to finished work formatted documents organized files on your computer research and much much more. And this is because it has the

more. And this is because it has the capability to access files directly on your computer, which I'll show you shortly and how to do that safely. Sub

aent agent coordination, so it can break complex work and complex tasks into smaller tasks and hand those off to different independent agents. It can

produce your professional outputs. So

deliver Excel spreadsheets, documents, formulas, presentations, whatever you want, whatever you can imagine. And it

can work on longunning tasks. Plus, it

can go steps further and actually start using your web browser to browse the web for you. Now, you should also be aware

for you. Now, you should also be aware when you start using this that the heavier the task, the more you're doing.

You are going to start using up your clawed tokens and your usage allowance.

So, be careful how much you use it if you don't want to absolutely burn through all your credits for that session and wait for them to reset in a few hours. But that's enough of the

few hours. But that's enough of the theory. Let's jump into how this works.

theory. Let's jump into how this works.

So this is the main co-work dashboard.

You'll see straight away that it is a research preview. Like it is still

research preview. Like it is still getting better and improving. So this is the worst version of co-work you'll ever use and it's still insane. You've got a little suggestions tab to start using here which might give you some ideas of

some of the tasks you can start using.

But before we actually run a task, we need to dedicate some area of our computer that it can start working from.

It needs some folders to work in. Now,

depending on the task, you want to give it a specific folder to work in. So, we

could go ahead and choose a folder. Now,

you could actually create a new folder and say we just want to be co-work. We

could say this is our main folder that co-works always going to work in. It's

never going to be able to touch any other folders on our computer. That

means you can be sort of secure in the knowledge that it's not going to go doing stuff around your computer, deleting files or reorganizing stuff that you don't want touched. or you can go ahead and just pick the folder that you actually want to do some work in.

For this first task I want to show you, I actually want to go into my documents and my screenshots. I want to give it access to all the screenshots on my computer. And when I do that, I just

computer. And when I do that, I just have to confirm. I say allow Claude to change files in my screenshots. So,

basically, I'm giving it access to this screenshot folder to actually start working in. And this is just a very

working in. And this is just a very simple demo to get you started on showing you how it sort of works with your folders. So, whatever it is you're

your folders. So, whatever it is you're trying to do, pick the folder or dedicate a folder on your computer that co-work allowing it to work in. Then, we

can also select our model here in the right hand side. Just like in the normal chat window, we can turn on and off extended thinking. We can move up to the

extended thinking. We can move up to the newest model, Opus 4.6 for the most powerful work. Of course, that's going

powerful work. Of course, that's going to use more credit, so be careful of which one you're using. We'll just stick with Sonet 4.5 for this example. And

then, actually, we've already got an example task in here that says, "Organize my screenshots." But you can prompt it as well. Go through my screenshots, rename them so it's obvious what they are, and then place them in a folder structure that makes them easier

for me to find in the future. So, we're

not doing any crazy prompting here.

We're just giving clear instructions and goals of what we want to achieve. When

we run a task, you'll then see this pop out on the right hand side here. It's

going to ask, actually, would you like to give access to files in your documents folder? Yes, I do, because

documents folder? Yes, I do, because that's where we're doing some work. And

you'll see Claude starts to help me organize my screenshots with descriptive names and a logical folder structure.

>> [snorts] >> Now you'll also see the progress of a task on the right hand side. So it's

actually scanning and cataloging everything before then executing the rest of the task here. And while we wait for that to run, you'll see this is actually a task that I did in my downloads folder as well. Got it to go through all of my downloads and just

file everything away neatly and select stuff to review for deletion, any duplicates, anything not relevant and just file everything away really nicely, which is a job that like everyone puts off but is super easy to do with

something like co-work. These are some of the basic features that you can start using them with. Once you get comfortable with these, then you can really start to ramp it up. And we'll

get on to those next. And this is crazy.

I'm going to say in less than 4 minutes, it's completed the task. Think how long this would take a human to do. You'd end

up just deleting them or ignoring them.

You'd have to go through, open each one, rightclick, rename, then work out where you want to put them in different folders. Here, now we've got everything

folders. Here, now we've got everything renamed in different folders ready to go. So, if we open up my screenshots

go. So, if we open up my screenshots folder now, documents here, go into screenshots. Look, everything's filed

screenshots. Look, everything's filed away neatly in different folders. And

then within those folders, we've got everything named. So, let's say sports

everything named. So, let's say sports here, England, cricket match details.

Some some screenshots I was taking of some cricket schools the other day.

We've got travel. We got some screenshots of some boarding passes named. Everything's just neat and tidy

named. Everything's just neat and tidy and ready to go. It's so cool. So,

that's the easiest way to start using Cowwork, getting it to actually control the files on your computer and do a little bit of housekeeping, some reorganization. But, let's take things

reorganization. But, let's take things up a notch. Let's go back and start a new chat window here. And you'll see on the left hand side, you'll get all of your chats and tasks that you've been running on the left hand side as well.

But, we're going to open up a new task.

And I'm going to show you how you can actually step by step create files with Claude Co-work as well. So, watch this next bit. You'll get more comfortable

next bit. You'll get more comfortable using it. and get this next feature

using it. and get this next feature layered on. So, I'm going to open and

layered on. So, I'm going to open and again remember we need to give it access to the right folder structure that we want to use. So, I'm going to give it access to this invoice processor agent.

So, I did that by choosing a different folder, selecting the folder that I wanted to give access to. We could

actually go deeper, but you can go as deep or as light as you want. I like to be quite specific to make sure I'm working in that controlled environment, but essentially we're building a an invoice processing agent here. So, it's

got access to this folder of several messy invoices. This could be hundreds

messy invoices. This could be hundreds long. This is only about six or seven

long. This is only about six or seven that we've got that are just misorganized. They're not really doing

misorganized. They're not really doing much. I know I need to actually do some

much. I know I need to actually do some administration and tidy them up and make sure they're all reconciled. So, what

I'm asking Claude Co-work here to do is again go through these files. We're

going to get them renamed. We're going

to get them put into correct folders.

But then I also want it to generate a spreadsheet or a CSV file to give me a clean overview of this whole task and all of my invoices. Now what it's going to do next, it's going to ask us some

questions cuz this is multiple steps here with some decisions that need to be made. So it wants to know what naming

made. So it wants to know what naming file structure should we use for invoices. So I can say something else. I

invoices. So I can say something else. I

can give it a custom format or it's going to give me some pretty obvious options. So let's say I'd like it with

options. So let's say I'd like it with the date, the vendor name, and the amount for the invoice. Then it's going to ask us what information the spreadsheet should include. So kind of just want to say like give me

everything. I want a complete overview

everything. I want a complete overview of all this and auto calculated totals and summary and how should I organize the monthly folders by invoice date, by due date, by received. We're just going

to go by invoice date. So the date the invoice was sent. So it is very much like having your own personal assistant.

Here's the task I want you to do. They

might have a few questions. Give them

the answers and hopefully in a few minutes it will come back with the work all done for you. And again, in less than 5 minutes, everything's done and ready to go. We've got our monthly folders. We've even got totals of

folders. We've even got totals of invoices there. And it's created our

invoices there. And it's created our spreadsheet invoice tracker for us, which we can open just in Claude Co-work here just to see how it works. Or

actually go and open it in our local spreadsheet app, whether that's Excel, we could upload it to Google Sheets, however you want to view these. And

you'll see we've got our outputed file here. Super neat. Exactly what we

here. Super neat. Exactly what we wanted. We've got all of our vendors,

wanted. We've got all of our vendors, invoice numbers, names, payment status on there, as well as monthly breakdowns.

And we could actually use this. We could

keep this file in our invoicing area and get Claude to update it every time we run this process with it. Plus, you'll

see our invoice processor agent file here now has invoices with everything dated in the right area. We've got our all invoices. We've got our original

all invoices. We've got our original invoice, but now they're filed away, too, and renamed by the date, the client, and the actual amount owed for this selection of invoices. Super cool.

And another admin task chalked off in just a few minutes. So, we're really getting through some stuff even with this basic setup at the moment. So,

that's amazing. We can organize and we can create files. But one of the real secret powers of co-work is it has the ability to go further and actually

browse the web. Now, to make this work, you need to add some more add-ons for your Google Chrome. Specifically, you

need to give it access to something called the Claude in Chrome add-on in the Chrome web store. And I'll put all the links below for you to get all of this stuff. You can get the Claude in

this stuff. You can get the Claude in Chrome add-on. Add that in, and it's

Chrome add-on. Add that in, and it's going to allow Claude the ability to browse the web. You can use this manually in the right hand bar here. If

you open the extension, you can actually instruct Claude to summarize and browse the web. But we actually want this to

the web. But we actually want this to run as a task through co-work. So I'll

show you how to activate that in co-work and how it works. And then we'll go a step further and combine it with all the skills and information we've been learning so far. So again, I'm just going to keep things really simple with our prompting and say, can you use

Chrome to go to my YouTube studio, write a report on the current performance of my YouTube channel? So we'll run that task. You know, for me, as someone who's

task. You know, for me, as someone who's a marketing background in my agency days, would have been awesome to be able to just tell co-work to go and check out the files on my computer, check out Google Search Console, Google Analytics,

here's the structure I like, my SEO reports, and just do the reporting for me rather than me have to pick through all the data and try and figure it out and write this stuff myself would have saved me hours, dozens of hours every

month. Now, what you're going to see is

month. Now, what you're going to see is it's going to open Google Chrome here and start using that clawed browsing connection to actually browse the web.

So, it's hopefully going to go to my YouTube Studio here. Actually, it hasn't quite got there yet because at times you might need to allow it to run certain tasks. So, it actually wants me, it's

tasks. So, it actually wants me, it's actually asking me allow Claude to browse the web on YouTube Studio. We can

say allow for this website. We can allow for this time or we can just hit allow all the time. So, we're just going to allow for this website so it can always go and browse that website without asking again. So, it does have

asking again. So, it does have permissions built in there to stop it just going wild. You can see uh here we go. It's navigated to the YouTube Studio

go. It's navigated to the YouTube Studio dashboard on Claude Chrome here on Google Chrome I should say. You'll see

that when Claude is actually using a web tab on your browser, it'll be highlighted in orange here to say, "Hey, this tab is included and I'm allowed to browse on here." You see it going through my YouTube studio to actually

start collecting this data for our report. And then if you check back in

report. And then if you check back in Claude Co-work, you see on the right hand side here context the connectors it's using clawed in Chrome. So

everything's working perfectly as we wanted it. It's capturing the analysis

wanted it. It's capturing the analysis before it actually compiles it into a professional report. While that runs,

professional report. While that runs, I'll also show you a few other bits here. So in the chat window, you also

here. So in the chat window, you also have this plus button on the bottom left. If you click that, it's going to

left. If you click that, it's going to open the ability to add files and photos. You've also got other connectors

photos. You've also got other connectors you can build in here. So, you can see here you can connect it to your Gmail, your Google Drive. I've got Excalor, I've got notion. So, for example, the

way we could add even more power is we've got our YouTube studio report document that it's created for us here.

I could also connect Claude to my notion and get it to look at my YouTube ideas, big brain dump area I have and actually start looking at what ideas are likely to succeed based on my YouTube studio

performance and actually probably start building out a content calendar, start writing scripts, go super deep. Once you

start understanding the power of this stuff, you can start going deeper and deeper on your processes. So connectors

in here are going to allow you to use API or MCP access direct into some other apps rather than waiting for co-work to actually browse the web to actually find

this information. And you can hit add

this information. And you can hit add plugins. Now plugins basically allow you

plugins. Now plugins basically allow you to add custom skills. If you've used the normal area of Claude and you use Claude skills, then this is a very similar thing. If you haven't and you don't know

thing. If you haven't and you don't know what I'm talking about with Claude skills, again, I'll put a video link underneath introducing you to Claude skills as well. But by default, there's

some extra skills which are basically processes, expertise, ways of working that are built into Anthropic here. So,

you can have a sales skill to help you prep for calls, manage your pipeline, write personalized messaging, productivity skill, a marketing skill that are all designed for these unique

use cases. You can also add skills,

use cases. You can also add skills, upload them if you're starting to find them or people are giving them to you or you've been creating them. A lot of people are giving these away as lead magnets now where you can buy packs of

skills to use or you can add marketplaces from GitHub by finding the repo. If you know how to use GitHub, you

repo. If you know how to use GitHub, you find that link, you add it in there, and it's going to give you access to all those skills that are saved on GitHub.

For example, this one's called Awesome Claude Skills. I got the link from

Claude Skills. I got the link from GitHub, put it into here, and it's given me access to all of these insane skills, like a hundred awesome Claude skills to

start using. So, I can hit like tailored

start using. So, I can hit like tailored ré generator. If you're job hunting, we

ré generator. If you're job hunting, we can install tailored ré generator. Hit

manage, and you'll see that this is now a plugin or a skill that's available to use on Claude Co-work. We can even customize it. The other thing you can do

customize it. The other thing you can do from this little plus button is hit include project. So in normal claude you

include project. So in normal claude you have in the sort of normal chat area you have something called projects. These

projects allow you to work with custom knowledge bases. Again I'll put a link

knowledge bases. Again I'll put a link in the description if you want to find out about claude projects too. But you

can actually use those in Claude co-work as well by clicking include projects.

Claude Co-work is actually going to download and save these files for your computer for you to actually use and work with within co-work. Again, I I I'd

say start with the basics, learn the basics of Claude, and then you can start layering on these more complex and added features as you get more comfortable in all of this architecture. So, there's so

much you can do in Claude. I think for a lot of people, the problem is like there's too much choice. I don't know where to begin. The easiest places are file and document management, research and analysis, document creation from

that management and research, and data and analysis. Those are the easiest ways

and analysis. Those are the easiest ways to get started. If you've got your own business, you've probably got some great ideas that are coming to the front of your mind already. And just a word of warning, it does have some limitations

because it is still quite new. So, it

doesn't have memory across sessions. So,

like chat GPT and normal Claude, they can remember what you've been working on across different chats. They have

memory. Co-work doesn't have inbuilt memory. You'd have to set that up

memory. You'd have to set that up manually yourself within your file structure, keeping files and folders of what you've been working on. You can't

share your chats to other users easily.

It only works on your desktop. So, you

have to download that desktop app and you need to rem retain session persistence. That means the desktop app

persistence. That means the desktop app must be open for your session to continue. If you close the app, the task

continue. If you close the app, the task is going to stop. So, it will use your computer power while you're running these tasks. You can't stop it from

these tasks. You can't stop it from doing that. I'll put a step-by-step

doing that. I'll put a step-by-step guide and instructions, a link in the description below that you can get inside what I call my AI recipe vault.

This has got links to pages that have all sorts of different processes in here, from step-by-step prompts to these setup and introduction guides to platforms like Co-work.