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Advanced Claude Cowork

7 power moves to get way more out of Cowork

by Lucia | @reallyusefulai

What's Inside
01Build Your Own Skills with the Skill Creator
02Test Your Skills with Evals
03Build a Personal Email Assistant
04Duplicate and Customise Plugin Skills
05Create Videos Without Leaving Cowork
06Scrape the Web for Content Ideas
07Manage Your Entire Content Calendar
+Power User Tips
Section 01

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:

To create a new skill, just tell Cowork what you want:

Create a skill that [describes 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.

Quick alternative (saves tokens)

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.

Section 02

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:

How to use the Eval Viewer:

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.

Why evals matter

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.

Section 03

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.

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.

Read my inbox from the last 24 hours. Summarise the most urgent emails and flag anything that needs a response today. Cross-reference with my calendar to check for conflicts.

Step 4: Schedule it.

Click Run Now to test it immediately. Results appear in the scheduled task history.

The power of combining connectors

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.

Keep your computer awake

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.

Section 04

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.

Duplicate all the content-related skills from the marketing plugin. Create my own copies. Update each one to always read my brand voice document before creating anything.

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:

Reflect on this conversation and update the skill so that it better reflects my preferences given everything we've talked about. Go ahead and update the skill.

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.

The brand voice document is the foundation

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.

Section 05

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.

Method 1: Python (Free, Local, Unlimited)

Cowork can create animated explainer videos using free tools installed on your computer. No external services, no credits, no extra cost.

Create a 15-second animated explainer video about [topic] using Python. Don't use any external video services.

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.

Method 2: AI-Generated via Blotato

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.

Create a whiteboard infographic about [topic] using Blotato

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.

Honest take

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).

Section 06

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:

Scrape this YouTube video [URL], extract the key points, and create a whiteboard infographic summarising the main ideas.

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:

Use Blotato to scrape this YouTube video [URL]. Write a LinkedIn and Facebook post about the main takeaways, then create a whiteboard infographic for the post.

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.

Works beyond YouTube

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.

Content remixing workflow

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.

Section 07

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:

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
Manage from your phone with Dispatch

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 Moves

Power User Tips

A few more things that will make a big difference once you're comfortable with the basics.

Global Instructions starter template

Here's what I recommend adding to your Global Instructions to start:

I'm [Your Name], a [Your Role]. Before starting any task: - Read relevant context files first - Ask clarifying questions before executing - Show a brief plan and wait for my approval before taking action Output preferences: - Direct and concise. No filler language. - Every deliverable should be ready to use without heavy editing Safety: - Never delete files without my explicit confirmation - Never modify files outside the designated output folder

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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