The SIMPLE Claude Cowork Setup That Runs my Life (Steal It)

I've been using Claude Cowork every single day for the last 6 months to run my business. And there are four

my business. And there are four different levels you need to understand in order to get the most out of this extremely powerful tool. So, in this video, I'm going to go over each of those levels individually. On top of

that, I'm going to show you exactly how I'm using Claude Cowork every single day inside of my business. And I'm even going to give you the exact prompt you can use in order to set it up alongside [music] me. Anthropic reached out to partner

me. Anthropic reached out to partner with me on this video. And if you take a look at my YouTube channel, every single video I make is about Claude Cowork. And

since I use this tool every single day, I figured why not make a video with them. And the best part about Claude

them. And the best part about Claude Cowork is it's made specifically for non-technical users in order to get the most out of Claude. So, without further ado, let's dive right into the video.

Now, a perfect example of something that Cowork can do is it can take a folder of 50 different receipts, for example, and automatically pull the information from it and add it to a spreadsheet that it

saves to our computer. And another use case is having it go and pull different unpaid invoices from your QuickBooks app. Then it can cross-reference the

app. Then it can cross-reference the Gmail threads that I have with each of these individual clients. And from

there, it could go and draft emails in my Gmail to each of these different people that I need to collect invoices from. All right, so, first of all, we

from. All right, so, first of all, we need to talk about what even is Claude Cowork? And how does this differentiate

Cowork? And how does this differentiate from things like Claude Chat, as well as Claude Code, which you probably hear everybody talking about? And personally,

I think Cowork is the perfect middle ground for 90% of people who want to use AI in their business or their professional life, but don't have any technical background. So, first of all,

technical background. So, first of all, I do think that Claude Chat is really good for certain tasks like thinking.

But, usually we're just going to get a text output from using Claude Chat.

Well, inside of Claude Cowork, it can actually do work for us. And what do I mean by that? Claude Cowork is working inside of folders on our computer and is able to reference those, as well as

generate files and store them on our desktop. So, not only can it work inside

desktop. So, not only can it work inside of folders on your computer, but it can use the specific applications that you use for your business or your professional life. Later on in this

professional life. Later on in this video, I'm going to share the exact ones that I use that you could build alongside me. Now, before we get

alongside me. Now, before we get started, I want to share with you a free resource that I crafted for you guys that's really going to help you out and set up everything that I talk about in this video. So, not only am I going to

this video. So, not only am I going to walk through how to set up Claude and explain all this for you, but you also have the exact prompts you can use to follow along and build alongside me. I

built this out because I don't want you guys to get confused. So, follow along with the video, but also this prompt pack and copy and paste these prompts in the Claude. Now, in order to get this

the Claude. Now, in order to get this resource for free, there's going to be a link in the description. You're going to see this sign up page. Just put in $0 right here. If you guys want to

right here. If you guys want to hypothetically pay me for this, just subscribe to the channel and I want to give this to you for free in exchange for that. So, you're just going to type

for that. So, you're just going to type in $0, click I want this, and this is going to take you to this page. Just

paste in your email, and just like that, you're going to download this HTML right here, and then we could open it up and begin going through this. All right, so the first thing we need to do if we've never used Claude Co-work before is

download the desktop app. There will be a link in the description to do so, so you will see this page. You'll just

click download for either Mac OS or Windows, whichever platform you're using. Then, once we open up the desktop

using. Then, once we open up the desktop app, we are going to see this exact interface, which actually just changed a couple of days ago. So, let me give you a quick tour. First, we have on the top left-hand side of our screen, we have a

home button, as well as we have a code button. The code button is for Claude

button. The code button is for Claude Code, which is basically what Claude Co-work is, but it's more tailored towards developers and technical users.

So, we're going to select home, and right inside of this chat box, you can now see we have the ability to toggle between chat mode and co-work mode. So,

make sure to toggle on co-work mode. All

right, so the first level to Claude Co-work that we need to understand is the foundation, and the foundation consists of two different things. So,

first of all, we have our workspace folder, which I'm going to show you how to set up. And then we have a Claude MD file. Basically, the workspace folder is

file. Basically, the workspace folder is where Claude Co-worker is going to work inside of. So, whether that's inside of

inside of. So, whether that's inside of a folder that has all of your receipts and you want to organize them, for example, or you have an entire operating system that you want it to manage. This

is how Claude is able to go and work on our actual computer. Next, the Claude MD, in simple terms, is basically a document that Claude loads in order to understand who you are and how you want

it to interact. And this is loaded every single conversation, so that way it has all the necessary context it needs. So,

you don't always have to sit and re-explain yourself every single time you talk with it. Now, I'm going to show you exactly how to build out both our workspace folder, as well as our Claude MD, right now. And it's going to be very simple. So, first of all, when we're

simple. So, first of all, when we're inside of Claude Co-worker, you can see that it shows project or folder right here. And this is where we want to

here. And this is where we want to either create or select a folder we want it to work inside of. And just to be clear, if we do not pre-select this folder, it's not going to be able to work inside of it. So, don't worry, it's

not going to go and make all these changes to your computer that you don't want it to. It can only work inside of the folder you grant access to. So, if I click on this, you can see I have a couple of folders myself. So, you could

go and select one that you already have.

For example, I have one for taxes here with all of my tax documents. I have one for Claude for marketing. But, let's go and choose a different folder right here in order to create one from scratch. So,

from here, we can just select a new folder. So, let's just call this Claude

folder. So, let's just call this Claude Co-worker test, since I already have one called Claude Co-worker. This folder is empty right now, but as we begin using Co-worker, it's going to populate with all the different documents and files that it creates for us. So, I'm going to

click open, and then I'm going to click always allow, so it's not always asking me to make changes. And now, we can work directly inside of this folder. Now that

we have our folder set up, let's go and craft our Claude MD file, so it can understand who we are, how we want it to operate, etc. So, let's come back to the prompt pack that I shared with you and

then come over to right here where it says teach Claude who you are. Copy this

prompt right here. We're then going to simply paste this into Claude, make sure that we have our folder selected that we want to work inside of. And now what it's going to do is it's going to interview us and go through seven

different questions to populate the MD file with all the necessary information so it knows who we are, how we want it to operate, and all that good stuff. As

you can see, it popped up this questionnaire box. I'm going to go

questionnaire box. I'm going to go through all seven of these. You do the same thing and then we'll reconvene once we go through that. And just like that, I answered these seven questions and it created this MD file. I could always

click on this, open it up, and here it breaks down who I am, who I serve, voice and writing rules, and basically how I want to work with it, as well as my folder structure. And this is something

folder structure. And this is something we can change over time as we work with it more and more and it could get a sense of what it is we do. At any time we could click on this and make changes directly or we could just come to Claude

and say, "Hey, I want you to change the Claude MD file with this new information." Now that you understand

information." Now that you understand how the foundation of Claude Co-work works, let's go and test it out so you could see the power of it. So, what I want you to do is select a random, messy folder on your computer if you already

have one. For me, I have this YouTube

have one. For me, I have this YouTube video one, which is super messy. And to

be completely honest, I think calling it messy is an understatement. This is what it looks like. These are all things that Claude over the past couple of months have generated for me and I really need to clean this up. So, let's go ahead and

test the power of Claude Co-work in order to organize this folder for us without us needing to manually add in different subfolders and whatnot. Now,

coming back to our prompt pack, let's come here to chapter one, step two, that says clean up a messy folder. So, simply

copy this. Let's bring this back over to Claude inside of the YouTube video folder that I just showed you. I'm going

to paste this in. Now, it's going to go and organize this for me. Also, guys, I wanted to create this prompt pack to make it really simple and easy for you guys to follow along with this video.

So, not only do you get to see how I'm using Claude Co-work, but you could set it up yourself with step-by-step guides.

So, if you're enjoying this, make sure to subscribe to the channel for more easy digestible content for non-techies, which is who I'm really trying to make my videos for. All right, and just like that, like a minute later, we now have all of these sub folders that makes it

really easy for me to see everything.

So, I can see my demo receipts. I can

see my specific outputs, plugins, and skills. I can see everything for my

skills. I can see everything for my school community, my PDF guides. This is

so much more organized than before, and we can do this with any of the different folders. This is just an example, so you

folders. This is just an example, so you can see how it's actually manipulating folders and files on your computer. Now,

moving on to the next level of Claude Co-work, there are two specific parts to this level that I'm going to go over right now. So, first, we have skills.

right now. So, first, we have skills.

So, if you don't know what a skill is, a skill is basically a reusable workflow that you can build inside of Claude for specific tasks. And this is just a set

specific tasks. And this is just a set of instructions for different workflows that you are running. Now, in order to give you an example, let me show you a few skills that I personally run that will probably be applicable to you as

well. Now, here's another skill that I

well. Now, here's another skill that I run almost every single day. This is my visualize skill. So, as you can see

visualize skill. So, as you can see here, I just came to Claude Co-work, and I said, "Visualize how Claude Co-work works." And what it does is it breaks

works." And what it does is it breaks down complex concepts and visualizes it for me. It explains very simply how it

for me. It explains very simply how it works. You could see that these are

works. You could see that these are interactive, and it lives in this HTML dashboard that it creates and lives directly inside of Claude. So, I mean, this is pretty cool. This is something that I use if I'm trying to learn something myself to really digest

information and really understand something. So, you could use this

something. So, you could use this whether you are a student trying to understand something in like biology, for example, or if you are a researcher trying to figure out something for a project. So, this is a PDF guide skill

project. So, this is a PDF guide skill that I created, where I can go and research any topic and create a cool PDF explainer infographic just like this.

So, for example, I created this one about how quantum physics works, and it gives me these cool little graphics along with breaking down in a really digestible format exactly how this works. So, this is something that I

works. So, this is something that I personally use to explain things to myself. I use it as resource lead

myself. I use it as resource lead magnets for my school community as well as my Instagram. And I crafted it in this specific style. So, whenever I run this skill, it's going to look exactly like this. And remember how we set up

like this. And remember how we set up that folder earlier on in this video called Claude Co-work? Well, inside that folder this PDF guide now lives. So, any

of these different assets that we generate inside of Co-work will be added to our folder on our computer. Now, if

you want either of those skills that I just showed you, you come to the prompt pack, you can see right here we have the My Visuals and Guide skills. Click

download this plugin. It's going to create the zip file. You're going to want to store this on your computer.

From here, we're going to open up Claude Co-work and come over to the left where it shows customize. And I'm going to show you real quickly how you can upload these skills and run them instantly inside of your Claude. Inside of this

little dashboard, we're going to want to click on plugins. So, click on plugin, click add, click upload plugin. And from

here, just drag in that zip file that we just downloaded. So, I'm simply going to

just downloaded. So, I'm simply going to drag this in, click on upload, and then just like that it shows that the plugin is installed and ready to use. As well

as here are 15 more skills that I run every single day inside of my business that you could download for free and begin running yourself. All right, so the second part of this level inside of Claude Co-work is connectors. We can

connect the different applications that we use every single day in order to do certain things through them. So, we

could pull from our Google Calendar. We

can post messages to our Slack. We can

upload video files to our Google Drive, etc. There's so many different things we could do with Claude when we connect it with the right applications. Now, here

is a perfect example of a connector in action inside of Claude Co-work. So, I

basically said, create an invoice for this company for 25,000, then for another for 12,000. And what it did is it pulled up my QuickBooks connector since I previously connected it, and it

generated these invoices ready to go for me to send to my clients. So, I can click preview PDF, it's going to pull up the PDF of the actual invoice. I can

send this from Claude to my QuickBooks account. So, it's automatically going to

account. So, it's automatically going to send this to my client. Now, let me show you exactly how to begin adding our specific applications that we want to connect Claude to. So, what we are going to do is we're going to come over to the

left-hand side where it shows customize right here. So, we're going to click on

right here. So, we're going to click on this and then right underneath skills right here, we have a button called connectors. So, if I click on

connectors. So, if I click on connectors, you could see I have a couple of them already added to my account because I've personally added them. And in order to add it, we're

them. And in order to add it, we're going to come over here to where it says add, click on this, and we could click browse connectors. And these are all of

browse connectors. And these are all of the pre-built connectors that Anthropic added to Claude Co-work. Now, in order to set up your first connector, let's go ahead and add Gmail as well as our Google Calendar. And then I'm going to

Google Calendar. And then I'm going to show you a skill you could run that works across these different applications. So, first of all, I'm just

applications. So, first of all, I'm just going to come here and search up Gmail.

From here, I'm just going to click add and it's going to have me log into my Gmail account. All I have to do is click

Gmail account. All I have to do is click on continue right here and it should send us back to Claude. Now, if I click this open Claude button, you can now see on the top right that it says that we have connected to Gmail. So, go ahead

and do the exact same thing for Google Calendar or for any of the different apps that you want to use. And there we go, I just did the exact same thing for Google Calendar. Now, coming back to our

Google Calendar. Now, coming back to our prompt pack, if you come to chapter two, step two, we're going to want to copy this prompt. And it's going to pull from

this prompt. And it's going to pull from both our Google Calendar and our Gmail in order to give us a rundown on what's going on across those different applications. So, I'm going to click

applications. So, I'm going to click copy here. Then I'm simply going to

copy here. Then I'm simply going to paste this into Claude and then we are going to see Co-work going in pulling from both our Gmail and our Google Calendar in real time. Not only can it pull information from there, but we

could have it draft emails for us in our own voice, which I'm going to show you how to do in just a second. And now,

just like that, you could see that it gave me the few most urgent things that I needed to reply to, as well as emails that are waiting my reply. And it even shows me the things that are on my calendar for tomorrow from Google

Calendar. Now, coming back to the prompt

Calendar. Now, coming back to the prompt pack, I'm going to show you how we could build out a skill that pulls from our Gmail account to analyze all of the sent emails that we have sent, and then it

crafts a specific email voice. So,

whenever we have Claude draft an email, it sounds exactly like you. Then, we

could have Gmail go and send those emails for us on our behalf. So, this

come here to this step right here. I'm

going to click copy, and then I'm just going to paste this prompt in. And what

it's going to do is it's going to read the last 30 different email messages that I sent in order to craft this email voice. [music] All right, so there we

voice. [music] All right, so there we go. That took about 2 minutes, and what

go. That took about 2 minutes, and what it did is it created this skill here. If

I click on it and open it up, we can see it on the right-hand side of our screen.

So, it shows a description. It shows the specific workflow. It then shows the

specific workflow. It then shows the different greetings and sign-offs that I personally use, as well as how long my emails are. It goes over the tone,

emails are. It goes over the tone, phrases that I actually use, and specific things that I never do. It even

then gives me a couple example drafts in my voice. So, now all you have to do is

my voice. So, now all you have to do is click add skill, and whenever you tell Claude to generate an email for you, it's going to sound exactly like you wrote it. Now, I want to quickly talk

wrote it. Now, I want to quickly talk about one of my favorite connectors inside of Claude that has honestly been a game-changer for me personally, and I think it will be really helpful for you.

And that is the Zapier MCP connector.

So, if you don't know what Zapier is, it's an automation platform that connects to 9,000 plus different applications, and they built out an MCP server that makes it really easy for Claude to work across these different

applications. So, yes, Claude has tons

applications. So, yes, Claude has tons of apps that it connects to, but if there's ever an app that you can't connect to natively inside of Claude, odds are the Zapier MCP will let you do that. For example, I built out this MCP

that. For example, I built out this MCP server that has Beehiiv right here.

Because right now inside of Claude, there is no native Beehiiv connector.

But now with the Zapier MCP, I can access this application in order to pull up statistics for my email newsletter or draft email newsletters for me, etc. And the same thing goes for school. There's

no connector, so I can connect to this using the Zapier MCP. And that is just one that I use. There are so many different connectors we can use inside of Claude. You could just scroll through

of Claude. You could just scroll through and and to find the ones that you use actively. All right, so the next level

actively. All right, so the next level of Claude CoWork is automation and we're able to create automations using something called scheduled tasks. These

are specific tasks that Claude runs on a schedule in order to get our work done for us. And these scheduled tasks can

for us. And these scheduled tasks can actually include specific skills that we build so we can run these workflows to perfection. Now, let me quickly show you

perfection. Now, let me quickly show you a couple of the scheduled tasks that I personally run every single day before I show you how you could build your own along with a prompt in order to set up your first scheduled task. So, over here

on the left-hand side of CoWork, you can now see that I have four different scheduled tasks that are running. First

of which is my morning admin dashboard.

Now, this task ran today at 8:09 a.m. It

ran yesterday, it ran the day before. We

can see all these different runs that this has ran. Now, I can click on this and it creates this HTML dashboard for me breaking down everything that's going on in my Gmail inbox, everything on my Google calendar, and specific things for

me to stay up-to-date with in the AI space. Next, this one is pretty niche

space. Next, this one is pretty niche and this is something use for my school community. So, what this does is this

community. So, what this does is this goes and searches through my actual paid school community and shows me everything that needs my attention. So, this way I don't miss specific posts that members in the community are making. It shows a

summary of the different questions that people are asking and then it even shows specific content gaps and video ideas based on the questions people are making inside of my school community. So, it

automatically scrapes this every single day at 7:00 a.m. So, I could wake up and see what do I need to attack inside of my community today. Now, if I come back to our prompt back, you could see that

we can wake up to a morning briefing.

So, we're just going to copy this prompt here, come back to Claude CoWork, simply paste this in and it's going to set up the scheduled task for us. So, every

single morning at 7:00 a.m. it's going

to search for the most important news in whatever our particular field is and then come up with the five stories that matter the most for us. Next up, you're going to see that it's creating the scheduled task. All I need to do is

scheduled task. All I need to do is click schedule and now it has been created and we could always see our scheduled tasks right over here on the left-hand side. And we can create these

left-hand side. And we can create these for any of the different workflows that we run day-to-day. And on top of this running every single day at 7:00 a.m.,

if I want to run this right now, I could just click on this scheduled task and then click run now, and it will run it for me. Now, this final level of Cloud

for me. Now, this final level of Cloud Co-worker is something I like to call our operating system. And we're able to build out this operating system with something called live artifacts. If you

don't know what a live artifact is, it's basically like a mini app that you can build directly inside of Cloud that pulls from your different applications that you can view at any time. So,

instead of us needing to go into our Gmail or Google Drive or different applications that we're using, we can just look at this dashboard that we've created inside of Cloud, and it can be really powerful when you build it for

your specific use cases. Now, here is an example of a live artifact that I personally have that I use every single day. This lives directly inside of

day. This lives directly inside of Cloud, as you can see, it's pinned right here called competitor content tracker.

And what this does is this finds all the top trending AI videos on YouTube based on my specific competitors and finds different content ideas for me. It then

shows the live view count, the outlier score, what date it was posted. And I

could even go and add each of these different videos as inspiration that I can build upon. So, here is the feed. I

could go through each of these different individual creators' videos, and then I even have this ideas board which I just added to, and I could click on this and view their videos. On top of that, I could even add in my own video ideas

here. So, you could begin to see this is

here. So, you could begin to see this is like this mini custom web app that I built that I could use directly inside of Cloud. And you could do this for

of Cloud. And you could do this for countless different use cases throughout our business or our professional life.

And in order to build one of these live artifacts, it's extremely easy to do.

So, what we're going to do, let's just come here, copy this prompt at the bottom of our prompt back. Then, we're

just going to come into our project and just paste this in and make sure that you're using Co-worker for this. So,

this prompt here says, "Build me a live dashboard I can open up every morning.

Call it my Co-worker OS dashboard. Pull

from my email and calendar and show today's meetings, anything I need to prep for, and which emails I still need to reply to. So, what it's going to do is it'll build out this dashboard for us that we could go ahead and customize. We

could add a specific to-do list tracker on there as well. But, this is just an example I wanted to show since everybody could use this specific co-work operating system dashboard. And keep in mind that this can connect to any of the

different apps that we have connected inside of Claude. So, if you have a really niche use case, you could pull that information into a dashboard just like this very simply by writing in a simple prompt. And now, just like that,

simple prompt. And now, just like that, we have this live dashboard that we can view at any time. This is pretty basic.

We can make as many changes to this as we would like. This is just the first example output that we got. And in order to view all the artifacts we have, if we come over to the left, click on artifacts, we can then view this and we have a bigger view of our dashboard

here. All right, guys, there we have it.

here. All right, guys, there we have it.

That is Claude co-work and how I'm personally using this every single day inside of my business. I would like to thank Anthropic for partnering with me on this video as I use this product literally every single day. And I've

been making videos about it for the last 6 months. If you guys want more content

6 months. If you guys want more content like this, subscribe to the channel for more. With that being said, I'll see you

more. With that being said, I'll see you guys in the next video. Cheers.