The Claude Desktop app (free download at claude.ai/download) and a paid Claude plan (starts at $20/month). Available on Mac and Windows. Everything in this guide works without any coding or technical background.
Chat vs Cowork vs Code
Claude has three modes. Understanding the difference is the first step to using the right one.
| Mode | What it does | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Chat | Conversation only. You ask, it answers. No access to your files or tools. | Research, writing, brainstorming, Q&A |
| Cowork | Can access your files, connect to business tools, run tasks on a schedule, and use browser automation. Visual interface with to-do lists and previews. | Business owners, solo founders, non-technical users who want AI to actually do work |
| Code | Terminal-based. Full developer access. Can write and run code, manage projects. | Developers and technical users building software |
Cowork is the sweet spot for most business owners. It does most of what Code can do (file access, scheduled tasks, tool connections) but with a visual, friendly interface. No terminal. No command line. Just describe what you want in plain English.
Chat is brainstorming. You talk through ideas, then go away and do the work yourself. Cowork is delegation. You describe what you want done, it creates a plan, you approve it, and it does the work. That's why Cowork calls its conversations "tasks" instead of "chats".
First-Time Setup
Before you do anything in Cowork, set up your profile and global instructions. This is the foundation that makes everything else work better.
Profile
Go to Settings > Profile. Add your name and tell Claude how you like it to work. This applies to both Chat and Cowork.
Global Instructions
Go to Settings > Cowork and add your Global Instructions. This is context that Claude will have at the start of every Cowork session. Unlike Chat, Cowork has no persistent memory between sessions, so this is how you give it consistent context.
Rules:
- Never delete any of my files. Flag files for review instead.
- Always present work for my review before sending or publishing anything.
- When organising files, use this folder structure: [your preferred structure].
- My brand colours are [colours]. My tone is [describe tone].
Tools I use: Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion, Slack.
Without Global Instructions, you'll repeat the same context in every session. With them, Claude starts every task already knowing who you are, what your business does, and how you like things done. This is the single most impactful thing you can set up.
Connectors
Connectors link Claude to the apps you already use (like Gmail, Slack, or Notion). They're what make Cowork actually useful instead of just conversational.
How to set up connectors
- 1Go to Settings > Manage Connectors
- 2Click Browse Connectors
- 3Find the tool you want and click to connect
- 4Authorise access (usually one click, takes about 30 seconds)
Available connectors
New connectors are added regularly. Some plugins also come with their own connectors. You can see which connectors a plugin needs when you install it.
Gmail, Google Calendar, and either Slack or Notion. These three alone let you set up a morning briefing, manage your inbox, and track your tasks. You can always add more later.
Each connector will ask for permission when Claude tries to use it during a task. You can approve or deny each action individually. You stay in control of what Claude can read, write, or send.
Tasks
Tasks are Cowork's version of conversations. The difference: tasks are about getting things done, not just talking about them.
How tasks work
- 1Click New Task in the sidebar
- 2Describe what you want done in plain English
- 3Claude creates a to-do list on the right side of the screen and works through it
- 4You can watch it work in real time, ask questions, or give feedback mid-task
The to-do system
When you give Claude a task, it breaks the work into steps and displays them as a to-do list. As it completes each step, it ticks them off. You can see exactly where it's up to, intervene if something looks wrong, or add extra steps on the fly.
For example, if it's organising your files and you see it about to move something to the wrong folder, you can jump in and say "Actually, put that in the Media folder instead." It adjusts and keeps going.
Running multiple tasks
You can run more than one task at the same time. While Claude is organising your Downloads folder in one task, you could open a new task and ask it to draft an email or analyse a document. Each task runs independently.
Cowork shows visual previews of things like carousels, documents, and emails. You can click through carousel slides, review formatted proposals, and see exactly what will be sent before approving. This is one of the biggest differences from Code, where output is mostly text.
Scheduled Tasks
Scheduled Tasks let Claude run work automatically on a recurring schedule. This is where Cowork starts feeling like having an extra team member.
How to create a scheduled task
- 1Go to Scheduled Tasks in the sidebar, or type /schedule in any task
- 2Describe the task and when you want it to run
- 3Claude creates a system prompt and sets the schedule
- 4You can review and edit the system prompt, constraints, and timing
What you can schedule
Check Gmail, Calendar, and Notion every morning at 7am. Send summary to Slack.
Pull numbers from email marketing, social media (via Apify), or Google reviews. Summarise trends and flag issues.
Pull new transcripts daily, generate social content, and schedule via Blotato.
Check Google reviews weekly, draft replies, and present them for approval.
How scheduling works technically
When you create a scheduled task, Claude writes a system prompt (the instructions it follows each time) and saves the schedule. You can see both of these by clicking into the scheduled task. You can edit the system prompt at any time to refine what it does.
Each run creates a new task thread, so you can see the history of every run and what it found each time.
You don't need to delete and recreate. Just open the scheduled task thread and chat with Claude: "Hey, also check my Notion task list for anything due today." It'll update the system prompt and constraints automatically.
Skills
Skills are saved, repeatable workflows. Think of them as step-by-step instructions for Claude. Set one up once, then reuse it whenever you need it.
What a Skill actually is
A Skill is a set of instructions that tell Claude how to do a specific task your way. It includes your preferences, your format, your rules, and any tools it should use. When you call a Skill, Claude follows those instructions instead of starting from scratch.
Skills vs tasks
| Tasks | Skills |
|---|---|
| One-off. You describe what you want each time. | Repeatable. You set up the instructions once. |
| Claude figures out the approach on the fly. | Claude follows your defined process. |
| Good for new or ad-hoc work. | Good for anything you do more than once. |
How to create a Skill manually
- 1Go to Customize > Skills
- 2Click Add Skill
- 3Write the instructions: what the Skill does, what format to use, what rules to follow, what connectors to use
- 4Save it
How to create a Skill from a conversation
This is often better than writing one from scratch. Work through a task with Claude, go back and forth until you're happy with the result, then say: "Let's turn this into a Skill." Claude will extract the process from your conversation and save it as a reusable Skill.
Calling a Skill
You can call a Skill in two ways:
- 1Slash command: Type / and select the Skill from the list
- 2Natural language: Just describe the task. Claude reads the description of each active Skill and picks the right one automatically.
Skill metadata
Each Skill has a name and description. The description is important because it's how Claude decides which Skill to use when you ask naturally. Make sure the description clearly says when this Skill should be used. For example: "Use this whenever Lucia asks about client proposals, post-meeting follow-ups, or pitch documents."
After using a Skill a few times, tell Claude: "Reflect on our conversation and update this Skill to get better results next time." Skills are living documents. The more you use and refine them, the better they get. Don't think of them as set-and-forget.
Toggle Skills on and off in Customize > Skills. If you have too many active at once, Claude has to read through all their descriptions every time you start a task. This slows things down and can cause it to pick the wrong one. Keep active only the ones you're using regularly.
Skill Creator
The Skill Creator is Claude's built-in meta-skill. It builds, tests, and quality-checks Skills for you automatically.
How it works
- 1Make sure Skill Creator is toggled on in Customize > Skills
- 2Open a new task and describe what you want the Skill to do
- 3Claude asks clarifying questions (naming conventions, output format, tools to use, etc.)
- 4Claude writes the Skill, runs it with test data, and scores the output against quality benchmarks
- 5It shows you a side-by-side review page comparing inputs and outputs
- 6You review, give feedback, and when satisfied, click Copy to Skills > Upload and Replace
The testing and evaluation system
This is the part most people don't know about. Skill Creator doesn't just write your Skill and hand it over. It generates test cases, runs the Skill against them, and scores the output. It creates a review page where you can see exactly how the Skill performed.
This means when you update a Skill later, you can tell if the update actually made it better or worse. Before this existed, you'd tweak a Skill and just hope it improved. Now there's a framework for measuring quality.
The Skill Creator with evals is one of the most useful features in Cowork. It turns Skill-building from guesswork into something closer to quality testing. If you change one requirement and it breaks something else, the evaluation catches it. This is how you build Skills that actually stay reliable over time.
Plugins
Plugins are bundles of related Skills and connectors grouped together. Think of them as ready-made toolkits you can install in one click.
How Plugins relate to Skills
If a Skill is a recipe, a Plugin is the cookbook. A Plugin groups related Skills together so they can work as a team. The Marketing plugin, for example, bundles brand voice, campaign planning, competitive analysis, content drafting, and SEO audits into one package.
| Concept | What it is | Analogy |
|---|---|---|
| Connector | Links Claude to an external tool (Gmail, Slack, etc.) | The utensils |
| Skill | A saved, repeatable workflow with your preferences | A recipe |
| Plugin | A bundle of related Skills + connectors | The cookbook |
Available Plugins from Anthropic
Brand voice, campaign planning, competitive analysis, content drafting, SEO audits
Capacity planning, change requests, compliance tracking, sub-agents for multi-step workflows
NDA review, contract analysis, compliance checking
Brand assets, visual guidelines, design feedback
Task management, scheduling, workflow improvement
How to install a Plugin
- 1Go to Customize > Plugins > Browse Plugins
- 2Browse the list and click Install
- 3Check what connectors the Plugin needs and connect any missing ones
- 4The Plugin's Skills appear in your Skills list, grouped under the Plugin name
Building your own Plugin
- 1Click the + button in the Plugins section
- 2Give it a name and description
- 3Add your custom Skills to the bundle
- 4Assign the relevant connectors
For example, you could build a "Content Engine" plugin that bundles your video repurposing skill, your carousel writer skill, and your email newsletter skill. Then everything content-related is in one package.
Plugin Marketplace
There's a growing community marketplace. If someone has built a Plugin and shared it on GitHub, you can install it by pasting the GitHub link into the marketplace installer. Worth browsing as the library grows.
Some Plugins (like Operations) can run sub-agents. These are smaller AI helpers that handle specific parts of a workflow on their own. It's tapping into some of Claude Code's deeper features, but wrapped in Cowork's friendly interface.
Claude in Chrome
Claude can control your browser. It opens tabs, clicks through interfaces, reads pages, fills forms, and pulls data from tools that don't have APIs.
Why this is useful
Not every tool has a connector or an API (a way for software to talk to each other automatically). Your email marketing platform, your accounting software, your analytics dashboard. Sometimes the only way to get data out is to open the tool and click through the interface yourself. Claude in Chrome does that clicking for you.
What it can do
Open your email marketing platform, navigate to analytics, export the data, and analyse it. All automatically.
Reply to Google reviews, fill in CRM entries, update spreadsheets in web apps.
Read competitor websites, pull product information, gather pricing data.
How to use it
You don't need to set up Chrome separately. When Claude needs to interact with something in the browser, it uses its Chrome tool automatically. You just describe what you want: "Go into my Flodesk account, grab last week's email analytics, and tell me what's working."
Claude opens the tool, navigates the interface, pulls the data, and brings it back to Cowork. You can watch it work in real time.
This gets really useful when combined with scheduling. Set up a weekly task: "Every Monday, go into my analytics dashboard, pull last week's numbers, and send me a summary in Slack." It does the tedious clicking so you don't have to.
Dispatch
Dispatch lets you control Cowork from your phone. Text it like you would a colleague. Your computer does the work.
How it works
- 1Download the Claude app on your phone (iOS or Android)
- 2Open it and you'll see your Cowork workspace
- 3Send a message describing what you want done
- 4Cowork runs the task on your computer and sends you back the results
Requirements
Your computer needs to be on and the Claude Desktop app needs to be running. You don't need to be at your computer. Dispatch connects your phone to your desktop Cowork session remotely.
What you can do from your phone
"Grab my email marketing analytics from last week and tell me what's working."
"Check my calendar for this week and tell me where I have gaps."
"Pull my latest Google reviews and draft replies for each one."
Ask follow-up questions just like texting. "Why are unsubscribes higher this week?" "What should I change for next week?"
Dispatch launched very recently. Expect it to improve quickly. Even now, it can save you a lot of data-fetching and manual clicking by letting you trigger tasks with a single text message from your phone.
File and Folder Access
Cowork can read, create, edit, move, and organise files and folders on your local computer. This is one of the core differences from Chat.
How to grant access
When you start a task, you can give Claude access to specific folders. Click the folder icon in the task input area and select which directories it can work with. It only accesses what you explicitly share.
What it can do with files
- 1Organise: Sort files into themed folders based on content type, date, project, etc.
- 2Read and analyse: Open documents, spreadsheets, images, screenshots, and PDFs. Summarise, extract data, or answer questions about them.
- 3Create: Generate new files like documents, spreadsheets, scripts, or presentations.
- 4Rename and move: Clean up naming conventions and restructure folder hierarchies.
Add "Never delete any of my files" to your Global Instructions. You can have Claude flag files for review and put them in a review folder, but deletion should always be your decision. This is a guardrail worth having.
Give Cowork access to your Downloads folder and say "Sort all the files into categories." It'll create a clean folder structure and organise everything in about a minute. It's the fastest way to see Cowork in action and understand what it can do.
Projects
Projects give you saved context that carries across multiple tasks. If you've used custom GPTs in ChatGPT, it's a similar idea but built for Cowork.
How Projects work
A Project has its own instructions and reference files. Any task you run within a Project automatically has access to all of that. This means you don't have to re-explain your business, your preferences, or upload the same files every time.
Setting up a Project
- 1Create a new Project in the sidebar
- 2Add project instructions (similar to Global Instructions, but only for this project)
- 3Upload reference files (brand guidelines, service descriptions, pricing, examples, etc.)
- 4Run tasks within the Project. Claude has all of that context automatically.
When to use Projects vs Global Instructions
| Global Instructions | Projects |
|---|---|
| Apply to every Cowork session | Apply only to tasks within that Project |
| General preferences and rules | Specific context for a type of work |
| Example: "Never delete files, use bullet points" | Example: "Client proposals for my consulting business" with uploaded templates and pricing |
Create separate Projects for different areas of your business. One for content creation (with brand guidelines and past examples), one for client work (with proposal templates and pricing), one for operations (with SOPs and tool documentation). Each one gives Claude deep context without cluttering your Global Instructions.
Cowork Cheat Sheet
Everything in one table.
| Feature | What it does | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Profile | Your name and general AI preferences | Settings > Profile |
| Global Instructions | Context Claude has in every session | Settings > Cowork |
| Connectors | Links to external tools (Gmail, Slack, etc.) | Settings > Manage Connectors |
| Tasks | One-off work with to-do tracking | New Task (sidebar) |
| Scheduled Tasks | Recurring automations | Scheduled Tasks (sidebar) or /schedule |
| Skills | Saved, repeatable workflows | Customize > Skills |
| Skill Creator | Builds and tests Skills for you | Toggle on in Customize > Skills |
| Plugins | Bundles of Skills (mini departments) | Customize > Plugins |
| Chrome | Browser automation and scraping | Automatic (used when needed) |
| Dispatch | Control Cowork from your phone | Claude mobile app |
| Projects | Persistent context across sessions | Sidebar |
| File Access | Read, edit, organise local files | Folder icon in task input |
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