Claude Cowork Fundamentals In 22 Minutes

I learned all about Claude Co-work for you. You can use it to automate

you. You can use it to automate workflows for you, like plan your day, triage and draft your emails for you, even automatically do bookkeeping. But

that is just scratching the surface. I

have it automating and building things across my business and my personal life.

Like, here's a dashboard that automatically tracks my investments, researchers, and suggests new opportunities, and sends me a daily digest with news that's relevant to my investments and suggestions that are based upon my personal investing

philosophy. Not financial advice, okay?

philosophy. Not financial advice, okay?

But I will show you how to build things like this later in the video. And you

don't even need to know how to code.

Crazy, right? In this video, I'm going to properly explain to you how Cloud Co works and show you how to do stuff all the way from automating some simple workflows to building entire ecosystems and softwares. Now, without further ado,

and softwares. Now, without further ado, let's go. A portion of this video is

let's go. A portion of this video is sponsored by Manis. Let's start off with first defining Claude Co-work. Cloud

Co-work belongs to a currently very popular category of AI products called local AI agents. And a local AI agent is an AI that lives on your actual computer that can autonomously do things with your files, your apps, and your tools.

If you've heard of or used OpenCloud before, you can think about cloud co-work as anthropics interpretation that is more secure, built exclusively using the cloud ecosystem and targeted more towards nontechnical people. In

general, I think local AI agents is such a cool category of AI product. Um, but

I'm not going to go into more detail about it here. I actually made an entire video about it if you want to dive deeper into this, which you can check out over here. But for this video, we're going to be more hands-on and jump straight into Claude Co-work.

So, first thing you got to do is go to cloud.com/rouct/ccowork.

cloud.com/rouct/ccowork.

Then you click download cla and install it on your computer. Yay, you have now downloaded it and this is going to be your local hub. So, if you click over here, you can see that there's actually three tabs available. This is chat,

which is exactly the same chatbot as on the web version at cloud.ai. You can

also see that you have all of your past threads that are here as well. Then

there is co-work. Co-work is the local AI agent, which we're going to be focusing on for this video. And then

there's also Claude Code, which is the coding agent. By the way, co-work and

coding agent. By the way, co-work and cloud code is actually such an OP combination as well, which I will actually give you a little taste for this at the end of the video. But let's

now focus on co-work. First thing you want to do is to config some settings.

So go to cloud settings and go to capabilities. I actually just have

capabilities. I actually just have everything turned on. Uh but you can choose what you're comfortable with.

Just make sure under visuals you have artifacts, AI power artifacts, and inline visualizations turned on. Then

let's go to co-work tab. I also have a dispatch turned on. This will allow you to access cloud co-work and control stuff on your computer through your phone, which is pretty cool. Then under

global instructions, these are instructions that will apply to all co-work sessions. So for mine, I have a

co-work sessions. So for mine, I have a little bit information about who I am, how to work with me, and then how to build stuff and things I should never do. You can write this yourself, but I'm

do. You can write this yourself, but I'm going to put a prompt on screen also in description which you can just copy paste into chat like here and then it will output it for you and you can copy

paste it back into core settings if you like. Click save. Then finally claude in

like. Click save. Then finally claude in Chrome. So I also have this turned on so

Chrome. So I also have this turned on so it allows Claude to go into Chrome and do stuff on Chrome and visit sites.

Pretty cool feature. You can do it as well if you like. All right, let's now do stuff. So go to coowwork and let's

do stuff. So go to coowwork and let's start off with some simple but useful little things that you can do with co-work to ease you into it. This is

like level one.

We will point co-work into working at a local folder. So let's say choose a

local folder. So let's say choose a different folder and we'll go with my desktop here which is very messy. I was

waiting to clean up with you guys. Click

open. Click always allow so it can do stuff in the folder. And we're going to ask it help me organize these files. I'm

going to go with Sonnet here, but you can also choose other models that you want. And then click proceed. And it

want. And then click proceed. And it

will lead you to this window. So you can actually see on the right that there is a progress window. It also shows you which folder it's operating under which is my desktop. It also has instructions here which can give it more instructions

specific to working in this folder. Like

maybe sometimes you want it to be more witty uh and sometimes you want to be more pushy, you know, depending what whatever it is that you're doing. I'm

going to just leave it blank here because, you know, we're just organizing some folders here. Not super complex.

And we also have context here, which core would be storing information like what tools it's using and any other types of memory that it's loading up.

Again, this is pretty clean for now, but there will be more stuff in here as you do more complex projects, which I will show you later on. All right, let's see.

Here's what I'm looking on your desktop.

We have 376 files total. Wow. Blah blah

blah. Okay. A bunch of these things. Oh

my goodness. I just have an API key that's just sitting exposed on my desktop. Oh, how awful. So, it's telling

desktop. Oh, how awful. So, it's telling me here's a proposed structure that it wants to do. Two questions. Good to move the screenshots into existing screenshots folder, merging everything there. What do you want to do with the

there. What do you want to do with the openey txt? I strongly recommend

openey txt? I strongly recommend deleting it or moving it somewhere securely. Okay, that is a great idea.

securely. Okay, that is a great idea.

Yes, let's go with that structure and let's delete the open AAI text and click enter. By the way, I picked this example also to illustrate to you the difference between co-work and just

like normal AI chatbot. Like if you're just chatting with Claude on web UI, it won't be able to modify stuff on your actual computer. Cool. So, we see that

actual computer. Cool. So, we see that it has assigned a task to itself and it's making progress. While it's doing that, I also want to show you another workflow. So, let's click on new task

workflow. So, let's click on new task again. And this time, I'm going to be

again. And this time, I'm going to be pointing co to a different folder, one with my credit card statements. Wow,

you're getting to know me so well. this

video. So, here is 24 months of my credit card statement. I will allow it and I will ask it, please analyze my credit card statements and create an

interactive dashboard that illustrates my spendings and also surface insights and suggestions. I'm going to pick the

and suggestions. I'm going to pick the Opus model cuz this is like lowkey kind of important. And I shall click proceed.

of important. And I shall click proceed.

Now, let's go back to my files and folders. Look at that. It is done.

folders. Look at that. It is done.

Here's the results. Okay, so it said deletion failed. File system permission.

deletion failed. File system permission.

Okay, got to delete it manually. Okay,

that's fine. And the credit card.zip is still sitting loosely at the root level.

Want me to move it to a credit card folder? Yes, move it to credit card

folder? Yes, move it to credit card folder.

It says done. And here it is. Wow, look.

It is so organized now. Has my OpenAI text.txt. So, let's actually delete that

text.txt. So, let's actually delete that now. Goodbye. deleted. Great. Now, let's

now. Goodbye. deleted. Great. Now, let's

go back and look at the spending and dashboard stuff. Okay, so it says it has

dashboard stuff. Okay, so it says it has found 24x CSV exports spanning 2024 to 2026. Before I dive in, a few decisions

2026. Before I dive in, a few decisions to build the right thing. So, what

format do you want? So, HTML artifact sounds good. How should I treat business

sounds good. How should I treat business versus personal spendings? So, flag

lonely octopus to business and personal charges separately. Let's do that. And

charges separately. Let's do that. And

which insights matter most? So, I guess it would be recurring subscriptions, spending trends over time. Actually,

yeah, I guess they're all important.

Let's do that. You can see that Opus is a lot slower, but it's also a lot more meticulous. So, it gave me a plan and I

meticulous. So, it gave me a plan and I said, "Sounds good. Let's build it."

Great. It built us this little dashboard. How nice. So, we can look at

dashboard. How nice. So, we can look at it over here. But actually, I'm going to just open this using Google Chrome.

Okay. So, has my total spendings and monthly business personal fees and interest, etc., etc. So, insights. Oh my goodness.

Fees and interest. That's really bad.

That is really bad. I'm being so vulnerable with you guys. Okay, so

active business subscriptions is over $4,000. That's a lot of money. Okay,

$4,000. That's a lot of money. Okay,

anyways. So, there's a bunch of stuff that's here and you can track it. um top

categories and I can also see the top 25 merchants and maybe I want to get rid of some of these etc etc etc. You get the point. By the way, you also can't just

point. By the way, you also can't just do this using the chatbot functionality directly because that only allows you to upload 20 documents at a time. Here's

24. And the dashboard is actually local.

You can see it right over here. I feel

like we're pretty warmed up now. So,

let's actually go to level two.

Okay, great. This is okay. But, you

know, it's not really like my vibe. the

color scheme is not really my vibe and I actually want it to be consistent with the branding I usually use. So, I'm

going to add another folder that contains my brand assets. By the way, by brand assets, I literally mean just like screenshots I took of the Lonely Artist logo and like some parts of the website

and stuff. Then I'm going to say based

and stuff. Then I'm going to say based on the brand assets, create for me a brand book that I can

use to guide future visual things.

Enter.

So, what format should the brand book be in? So, we'll do PDF as recommended.

in? So, we'll do PDF as recommended.

Brand scope. Lonely octopus only. So, it

knows that I have like a personal branding as well, but we're just going to go with the Lonely Octopus branding.

How comprehensive. Comprehensive. Yes.

Now, let's actually look at this dashboard now. And there you go. Look at

dashboard now. And there you go. Look at

that. It looks so much better. This

color scheme is much better. It looks

like my brand book. Nice. So, I'm

probably going to be using this brand book and applying it to things all the time. So, I'm actually going to change

time. So, I'm actually going to change this into what Co calls a skill. Make

applying the brand book onto visual things we build a skill. Let's go

through this first and I'll explain a little bit more about what I mean by skill. So, scope of the skill is going

skill. So, scope of the skill is going to be generic brand appliers. So, I want it to actually just apply to everything that I build. And where should the skill live? I'm going to have it as a local

live? I'm going to have it as a local setup for now, but it's actually something you can share with other people as well. So, they could also be able to have the brand book and then apply this color scheme and fonts and stuff to whatever it is that they're

building as well. But we'll keep it local for now. What output should the scale cover? I'm going to cover all of

scale cover? I'm going to cover all of it cuz I I like this color scheme. And

there you go. Here is a reusable set of instructions that Co now knows how to apply this brand book into any visual thing that we're creating. So this here is the skill and you can see it has a text file that basically explains how it

is that you should be applying this brand book and to invoke it in the future you can just type apply brand to whatever it is that you want to apply it to. For example, I've applied

it to some openclaw prompts and you can see that it has all the branding now.

How pretty. And here for an inbox triage dashboard that I have. Congratulations,

you just created a skill that you can apply anywhere. You can probably see how

apply anywhere. You can probably see how powerful this is as you keep using co-work and building up your own collection of skills. And you can use other people's skills too. If you click on customize and click skills and click

the plus icon, you can actually see that there are other skills that people have built that you can use yourself like canvas design for creating beautiful visual art, docuing for co-authoring

documentation, eternal comps for eternal communications, etc. So, I'm going to put on screen some of my favorite skills, those that I created and from other people. take a screenshot so you

other people. take a screenshot so you can try them out later too. Now, kind of related to skills, we also have what are called connectors. Connectors is another

called connectors. Connectors is another way for cloud co-work to be able to do more things. Specifically, it allows you

more things. Specifically, it allows you to connect to third party software like the most popular ones like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, and so much more. Like, there is so much that's here. Pretty much whatever third

that's here. Pretty much whatever third party software you want to connect it to, it's probably going to be here. And

if it's not, you can also connect it yourself using what is called MCP. Not

going to go into too much more detail about this here, but I made an entire video about MCP, so you can check it out over here if you would like. An example

of a workflow that uses a connector is this inbox triage that gets all of my emails and then categorizes them into what I should be doing and what is just noise. You can see that under

noise. You can see that under connectors, there is Gmail that's linked. I'm going to put on screen as

linked. I'm going to put on screen as some of my favorite connectors and how I use them in my workflows. And finally,

there are plugins. plugins is a combination of skills and connectors to serve a specific kind of task. There's a

bunch of these as well over here. For

example, this finance one that is built by Anthropic themselves and it allows for streamlined financing workflows. You

can see that some of the skills that it contains is audit support, close management, financial statements, etc. And here are the connectors that it contains like Snowflake, data bricks, BigQuery, Slack, Gmail, etc. So I've already installed this and the way that

you can use this is point it to a folder that has statements like the AX credit card statements for example type slash and under finance you can see there's financial statements so you can do /f

financial statements generate a statement for me for example and here is a financial statement uh for October 2025 financials so it has the read me

and it has P&L uh transaction details smart receipts etc. For anybody that's running a business, this is a a game changer. Trust me. I'm also going to put

changer. Trust me. I'm also going to put on screen now some of my favorite plugins and how I use them. So, we just got a new office. This is the new office space. As you can see, we have already

space. As you can see, we have already made it super messy. Hey, Joy.

Hello.

Yes.

I took some of the photos of this place and gave them to Manis, the world's first general AI agent that delivers real results. I described a budget of

real results. I described a budget of less than $500. explained that I wanted kind of like a light academia vibe and off it goes. It says that the office space has really great lighting from the big windows and it gave some info pics

filled with light and really cozy feelings which I really liked. So I said yes, actually generate your recommended decor for our actual office space. I

also love that it's interactive and you can play around with it to get it to your liking. And here are the results. I

your liking. And here are the results. I

loved it. The lamp, the carpet. I

especially love these white flowy curtains that I recommended. And it

actually gave links to products that were under our budget. We ended up spending less than $200. What would have taken days, took us only 20 minutes. And

here is the finished results. It looks

so good. The curtains and the pictures, the carpet, the lamp, but it's still so messy though. You can try out Madness

messy though. You can try out Madness for free at this link over here, also linked in description. Thank you so much, Manus, for sponsoring this portion of the video. Now, back to the video.

Great. There's now one more feature I want to introduce you to on Co-work.

Before I can say that congratulations, you could consider yourself intermediate at cloud co-work and that is the scheduled tab. You see a lot of tasks in

scheduled tab. You see a lot of tasks in life are reoccurring like you got to wake up every morning, eat, go to work, check your emails, sleep, etc. So that is why scheduling task can be a massive

unlock. Now, to do this, we could type

unlock. Now, to do this, we could type schedule every morning at 7:00 a.m. Give

me a brief of my day based upon my calendar and a short brief of any emails I should be aware of. And it send it to my Apple Notes. Click enter. And it says done. Now, to activate this, you go to

done. Now, to activate this, you go to scheduled, click that task, and then click run. Now, we're going to be doing

click run. Now, we're going to be doing a trial run pop quiz. What skills and connectors are being used in order to do this run? Put into the description. See

this run? Put into the description. See

if you're paying attention. And this is what it looks like on my Apple Notes.

And I get these every single day. By the

way, I like using Apple Notes um because I can also look at it directly on my phone when I wake up. Amazing. Now, I

want to go on to the next section that takes you from intermediate to advanced co-work user. And seriously, this is

co-work user. And seriously, this is going to unlock even more than this.

Like, if you think this is impressive what you just did, like no, wait for it.

It is going to get very magical because I'm going to introduce you now to projects.

Projects are persistent self-contained workspaces in co-work that basically wrap a folder with its own instructions, memory, file and connections. So co-work

basically remembers all the context across all different sessions related to that project. It enables you to do much

that project. It enables you to do much much more complex things. For example, I have a parent folder here called Co-work Playground. And within it, I have these

Playground. And within it, I have these four projects that pretty much span the entirety of my personal and professional life. Under Lonely Octopus, Co-work is

life. Under Lonely Octopus, Co-work is helping me create curriculums, resources, and tracking our boot camp students. Under content, it's

students. Under content, it's researching content ideas for me. Under

personal, solving my personal problems, and under investments, there's workflows that have to do with my investments.

This is what a project folder looks like. So, first of all, this is what the

like. So, first of all, this is what the files of the investment projects looks like. And corresponding to that on

like. And corresponding to that on co-work you can click projects investment. And this is what it looks

investment. And this is what it looks like. There's a lot going on over here.

like. There's a lot going on over here.

Don't panic. I'm actually going to show you how to set up your own project.

First thing you want to do is create a folder. Let's make a new folder and just

folder. Let's make a new folder and just call it stock portfolio. Then we're

going to go on co-work and click project and new project. And we're going to use an existing folder. Choose the folder stock portfolio. Open. And under

stock portfolio. Open. And under

instructions, I'm going to write, "You are my financial analyst and advisor. Be

very thorough and doublech check numbers.

Push back on me when there are things that do not match my investment

philosophy. Be direct." Then we're going

philosophy. Be direct." Then we're going to click create. Amazing. Wow. Okay. You

just created a project. Now, before I do anything else, whenever I start a project, I use what is called the productivity plugin. So, if you

productivity plugin. So, if you remember, go to customize over here, personal plugins, browse plugins, and you can install the productivity plugin.

So, technically, the productivity plugin is supposed to help you manage tasks, plan your day, and build up memory of important context about your work, etc. So, it's about your productivity, right?

So, you may be asking, Tina, like, why are you installing a productivity plugin for a project? Well, let me just show you. So, I'm going to do the plug-in and

you. So, I'm going to do the plug-in and I'm going to initiate with start and you can see that it has created task.md and

a dashboard and a directory and it asks me some other questions as well. Okay,

so even though I'm not really like managing tasks and things like that, the reason I always do this is because it sets up a memory system. So, the next step I'm going to do here is I'm actually going to drop in a screenshot

with a bunch of my stock positions. And

I'm going to write here are my investments.

Not financial advice, okay? Just

literally showing you how to do this.

And it says, "Let me write all this to memory and claw the empty now." So, this is the power of the memory plugin. It's

actually going to remember all of this and then also note it down for you. So,

I don't want to go into too much detail about how the agents is saving memory, but basically like having this memory system will allow you to have more control in updating the agents memory and being able to see what's in the

agents memory much more easily just by opening different markdown files. You

may have seen other tutorials that tell you that you need to maintain like claw.md or like memory.mmd files

claw.md or like memory.mmd files

yourself. You could do that. That's

totally fine. But this plugin, this productivity plugin, basically does that for you and it's a lot more sophisticated than whatever it is that you probably figure out yourself cuz Anthropic built this plugin and they're

probably better than you. No offense, so don't reinvent the wheel, right? You can

see the files that I created over here.

Um, for example, if you click into memory and you open this file, it shows you a lot of different portfolio positions that are here. So it maintains cloud MD and the memory MD as well. So

sets up the entire system for you.

Great. And every time that you do something new, all you have to do is type /update and it would automatically fill in any of the gaps in memory that it has for you. Nifty, right? Okay,

let's actually just go and build something. So, let's go to projects,

something. So, let's go to projects, stock portfolio, and we could do something like schedule at 700 a.m.

across the world. So, my actual investment philosophy is a lot more thorough than this, but I'm not going to go into way too much detail right now.

Let's just go with this for now. Click

yes to schedule and great. If we look at the scheduled

and great. If we look at the scheduled daily portfolio digest and then we can click run now, then you can get something looks like this. TLDDR will

move your book thesis check action items. Cool, right? And then there you go. You can pretty much just build

go. You can pretty much just build whatever you want now with all of the other features that we covered earlier.

All those connectors, skills, etc., etc. pretty much build to your heart's content. For example, we can create what

content. For example, we can create what I like to call a mission control dashboard for your investments that looks like this. It contains my investments, tracks my daily digest, researches new opportunities for me, and

always makes sure that it's in line with my investment philosophy. It's kind of like the mission control, so I can see everything I want to see about my investments. I have one of these

investments. I have one of these dashboards for most of my other projects as well, cuz I like seeing things. So, I

am not going to recreate the entire dashboard right now, um, because that's going to take a long time, plus my sweet, sweet tokens. But do not worry, I am actually going to put a prompt in the description if you want to create a

dashboard that's similar to this for your investments if you like. Wow, there

you have it. Now that you've unlocked projects, you've pretty much unlocked the ability of building whatever it is that you want using co-work. It is so powerful.

Please let me know what it is that you want to be building. And I'm also going to put on screen now some of my projects and some projects that I want to be building um using co-work myself. So in

case you want some extra ideas at this point, you are now an advanced user of Claude Co-work. But before I end this

Claude Co-work. But before I end this video, I do want to address one more add-on that will literally make you like top like I don't know like 0.1% of

co-work users. And that is if you use

co-work users. And that is if you use co-work in combination with claude code.

Okay. So yes, you do need to know a bit about how to code. Have video over here if you're interested in learning. But

let me explain why this is so powerful.

You see with cloud cowork, you can build out all these workflows. You can even build out these dashboards I just show you like the mission control dashboard and a lot of other things too. However,

if you're really into building things, eventually your projects are going to get bigger and bigger and more complex.

And as amazing as co-work is, it is not specialized as a AI coding agent. and

that is cloud code where you're going to be able to unlock a lot more features specific for coding and in general you will also see that the coding ability is going to be better than co-work so how do you do this you may ask well

anthropic actually makes this really really easy to do all you have to do is switch over to the code tab of claude on this hub change your working directory to the directory that you want to be

working in like investments for example you can write something like add on to my mission control dashboard a new tab tab that lets me create technical

trading bots. Enter trust workspace and

trading bots. Enter trust workspace and you can start doing that. I'm not going to go into a full tutorial about how to use cloud code because that's like literally an entire other video and this video is extremely long already. But,

you know, let me know in the comments if you want me to do that. Maybe I will do an entire video about AI coding. I'm

going to put on screen now some other examples of things that you can build using this co-work plus cod code combination. Maybe you can try them out.

combination. Maybe you can try them out.

All right. Okay. We are at the end of this video now. We have covered a lot.

Oh my goodness. Thank you so much until watching the end of this video and I really hope this was a helpful video for you to do stuff with co-work because I think it's amazing. Thank you so much.

Happy co-working and I will see you guys in the next video or live stream.