Advanced Claude Cowork
7 power moves to get way more out of Cowork
Build Your Own Skills with the Skill Creator
The Skill Creator is a skill that helps you build other skills. If you only install one thing from the Skills library, make it this one.
A skill is just a SKILL.md file (a plain text file) with instructions, preferences, and rules that Claude follows when doing a specific type of work. Think of it as a reusable cheat sheet. Any task you repeat, any task with specific preferences you don't want to re-explain every time -- that should be a skill.
Skills can work together -- one skill can call other skills. And they trigger automatically based on what you ask. You don't have to type /skill-name every time. Cowork reads your message and picks the right skills on its own.
How to install the Skill Creator:
- 1Go to Customize > Skills
- 2Click the + button
- 3Browse skills (not plugins)
- 4Search for "Skill Creator"
- 5Click + to install
To create a new skill, just tell Cowork what you want:
The Skill Creator will ask you what the skill should do, clarify your preferences and what the output should look like, then write the full set of instructions. It also sets up evals (more on that in Section 02), runs test cases, and lets you give feedback before saving.
If you're on the $20/month plan and watching your usage, skip the Skill Creator and tell Claude directly: "Create a simple skill called [name] that [does X]. Don't use Skill Creator." It takes two minutes instead of thirty, but you won't get the testing and grading features.
Test Your Skills with Evals
An eval (short for "evaluation") is a grading system that checks whether your skill actually works correctly. Without evals, skills can activate on the wrong prompts or miss the right ones entirely.
When you build a skill with the Skill Creator, it automatically generates a set of test cases. These are example prompts that get run through your skill so you can see the output and judge whether it's good enough.
The Skill Creator builds two types of tests:
- +Positive examples. Prompts that SHOULD trigger your skill. For example, if you made a file organiser skill, "organise my messy downloads folder" should trigger it.
- -Negative examples. Prompts that should NOT trigger your skill. "Rename all my PDF files" is a rename task, not an organise task, so it shouldn't trigger.
How to use the Eval Viewer:
- 1The Skill Creator generates 6 test outputs and gives you a link
- 2Click the link to open the Eval Viewer in the right-side panel
- 3Review each output. Click Next to cycle through them
- 4Type feedback for each one (e.g. "This hook is too long, keep it under 8 words")
- 5Click Submit All Reviews
- 6Close the viewer and tell Claude "looks good" or give more feedback
After output evals, you'll also see the trigger test set. You can toggle any example between yes and no. If a negative example should actually trigger your skill, toggle it to "yes" and it moves to the positive set.
Every time you update a skill, run it against the eval to make sure it scores the same or higher than before. If it scores lower, the update made things worse. Revert it. This is how you keep skills sharp over time instead of accidentally breaking them.
Build a Personal Email Assistant
This is where everything comes together. You connect your email and calendar, write one prompt, schedule it, and every morning you wake up to a briefing of what needs your attention.
Step 1: Connect Gmail and Google Calendar.
- 1Go to Customize > Connectors
- 2Click + to browse connectors
- 3Search for Gmail, click +, grant permissions
- 4Search for Google Calendar, click +, grant permissions
Step 2: Set permissions carefully. For Gmail, set read-only tools (search emails, get email content) to Always Allow. Set "Create Gmail draft" to Needs Approval so it asks before sending anything. For Calendar, set read-only tools to Always Allow and create/edit/delete to Needs Approval.
Step 3: Write your daily brief prompt.
Step 4: Schedule it.
- 1Click Schedule in the upper left sidebar
- 2Click New Task
- 3Paste your prompt
- 4Set frequency to Daily at 8:00 AM
- 5Choose a model (Haiku is fine for this, saves tokens)
- 6Click Save
Click Run Now to test it immediately. Results appear in the scheduled task history.
Once Gmail and Calendar are connected, you can combine them with local files too. For example: "Check my inbox for any invoices, compare with my calendar for upcoming payment deadlines, and save a summary to my workspace folder." Email plus calendar plus local files, all in one prompt.
Scheduled tasks only run while your computer is awake and the app is open. If your daily brief runs at 8am but you don't open your laptop until 9am, it won't run. Enable "Keep Awake" if your schedule runs before you're online.
Duplicate and Customise Plugin Skills
Plugin skills are locked -- you can't edit them. The fix is simple: copy them into your own custom skills, then change them however you want.
When you install a plugin like the Marketing plugin, you get a bundle of pre-built skills (brand review, content creation, SEO audit, and so on). They work out of the box, but they don't know your brand voice, your preferences, or your style. And you can't change them because they're locked.
Here's what I do instead. I ask Cowork to duplicate each skill from the plugin into my own custom skills, then update every copy to reference my brand voice document.
Claude will create personal copies of each skill and wire them up to your brand voice file. Now you have full control. You can edit the instructions, add new rules, change the output format, whatever you need.
The real benefit is that you can keep improving them. I update my skills every week. Small tweaks add up over time. After a long conversation where you've been refining content and giving feedback, tell Claude:
This evolves your skill based on real feedback without starting from scratch. Over weeks, your skills get closer and closer to how you would manually do things.
If you haven't created one yet, start there. Run the interview prompt from the beginner guide and save the result as a brand voice document. Every content skill should reference it. When you update the document, all skills that reference it automatically use the updated version. Update it weekly.
Create Videos Without Leaving Cowork
You have two ways to create videos directly inside Cowork. One is free and runs on your computer. The other uses Blotato for AI-generated content.
Cowork can create animated explainer videos using free tools installed on your computer. No external services, no credits, no extra cost.
Cowork will install the needed software (MoviePy, Pillow, and FFmpeg) automatically if they're not already on your computer. It writes a script, creates the video, and gives you a clickable link to view it.
You can add local images, your brand colours, and background music. The first attempt might not look perfect. Just give direct feedback: "Make it cleaner with better readability" or "Use my brand colours." Claude will redesign and regenerate.
If you have Blotato connected, you can use its rendering engine for more polished visual content. Available templates include whiteboard infographics, anime style graphics, image slideshows, and AI video with voiceover.
Claude writes a detailed prompt, sends it to Blotato, and waits for the result. Rendering takes one to two minutes for images, five to ten minutes for full videos. If you don't like the output, tell Cowork what to change and it regenerates.
Both methods are simpler than using Remotion with Claude Code. The Python method is great for quick animated explainers at zero cost. Blotato is better for polished infographics and social content. For more advanced video work, use Claude Code with Remotion (I have a separate guide on that).
Scrape the Web for Content Ideas
One of the fastest ways to create content is to remix what's already out there. Cowork can grab content from YouTube videos, articles, and blog posts, then turn them into new formats for your platforms.
Blotato includes a scraper (a tool that grabs content from web pages) that works with YouTube videos, TikTok videos, podcasts, PDFs, and websites. You give it a link, it pulls out the content, and then you tell Cowork what to make from it.
Here's the prompt I use:
Claude will grab the video content through Blotato, pull out the key points, write posts for each platform using your brand voice, and create a visual. All in one prompt.
You can chain this with other actions too:
This is how you remix existing content into new formats. Watch a great video, grab the URL, and let Cowork turn it into posts and visuals for your audience.
Cowork's web browsing also works with articles and blog posts. Paste any link and ask Cowork to summarise it, pull out key points, or create content based on it. You don't need Blotato for reading web pages, but Blotato adds the ability to create visuals on top.
I use this every week. I find three to five YouTube videos or articles in my niche, scrape them, and ask Cowork to create a batch of posts. Combined with the content calendar in Section 07, I can go from "I have nothing to post" to "my entire week is scheduled" in about an hour.
Manage Your Entire Content Calendar
Once Blotato is connected, Cowork becomes your content calendar. You can create, schedule, reschedule, and delete posts across every platform, all from one place.
Connect Blotato as a custom connector:
- 1Go to blotato.com > API and generate your API key
- 2In Claude Desktop: Settings > Connectors
- 3Scroll to Add Custom Connector
- 4Name it "Blotato", paste the URL from the API page
- 5Click Add > Connect, approve access in the browser popup
Set up your posting schedule. In Blotato, go to Calendar and define time slots per platform (e.g. Instagram at 6:43am, 12:43pm, and 7:45pm). When you create content in Cowork, just say "schedule to next free slot" and Blotato fills the next available time.
Batch create a week of content in one sitting. I sit down once a week, create all my posts, and schedule everything. Here are the prompts I use to manage it all:
| Task | Prompt |
|---|---|
| See upcoming posts | List my next 10 upcoming posts |
| Reschedule posts | Reschedule all posts to be 2 days later |
| Delete test posts | Delete all test posts |
| Batch schedule | Schedule all of this content for the entire week |
| Next free slot | Schedule this post to next free slot on Instagram |
Dispatch lets you control Cowork from your phone while it still has access to your local computer and all your connectors. Waiting at a coffee shop? "List my next 5 posts and reschedule the last two for tomorrow." Cowork handles it from your desktop.
Power User Tips
A few more things that will make a big difference once you're comfortable with the basics.
- 1Set Global Instructions. Go to Settings > Cowork > Global Instructions. This loads before everything else, every session. Add your name, role, output preferences, and safety rules. I include "Show a brief plan and wait for my approval before taking action" so Cowork never runs ahead without me confirming first.
- 2Use Projects to organise tasks by topic. Create separate projects for different types of work: one for social media, one for SEO, one for client work. All tasks within a project share the same context, so Cowork remembers what you discussed last time.
- 3Import your ChatGPT memory. Go to claude.com/import-memory. Copy the prompt shown on that page, paste it into ChatGPT, copy the output ChatGPT gives you, and paste it into Claude's memory settings. This way you don't have to start from scratch when switching tools.
- 4Update your brand voice document weekly. Every time you notice something you want to change ("stop using hashtags", "use more direct hooks"), update the document. All skills that reference it will automatically use the updated version. Small tweaks add up to much better output over time.
- 5Use the self-improve loop. After finishing a task you're happy with, tell Claude: "Update the skill with what worked in this conversation and store this output in my successful examples folder." This makes a huge difference over time. Don't just create output -- improve the skill after each strong result.
Here's what I recommend adding to your Global Instructions to start:
Now go build something.
You've got skills, evals, connectors, a content calendar, and video creation. Time to put it all together.
Have any questions? Just DM me @reallyusefulai on Instagram or TikTok
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