Guide: Claude Cowork Starter Pack

Claude Cowork is a desktop workspace that lets Claude act on your behalf — not just answer questions, but plan work, read your files, create documents, connect to apps, and execute multi-step tasks while you supervise.

The distinction from regular Claude Chat matters. Chat is your thinking partner: you ask, it answers, everything stays inside the conversation window. Cowork bridges into execution. It has the same agentic engine as Claude Code — meaning it can plan, execute, use tools, and work independently across multiple steps — but it lives inside a visual desktop app that anyone can use. No terminal. No coding. You describe an outcome, point it at a folder, and it does the work.

For marketing and commerce teams, the practical shift is this: instead of asking Claude to draft something and then manually saving, formatting, and organizing the output yourself, Cowork handles the full loop. It reads your source files, creates the deliverables, names them, saves them in the right place, and asks you to review before anything consequential happens.

What You'll Need

• A paid Claude plan. Cowork requires Pro ($20/month), Max ($100/month), or Team/Enterprise. If Cowork replaces even one or two tools you currently pay for, the subscription usually pays for itself.

• The Claude Desktop app. Cowork runs inside the desktop application, not in your browser. Download from claude.ai/downloads for macOS or Windows.

• An understanding of usage limits. Cowork tasks consume more of your daily allocation than regular chat because they involve reading files, running scripts, and taking multiple actions per task. The Max plan provides significantly more usage.

Step 1: Installation and First-Time Setup

Go to claude.ai/downloads in your browser. Download and install the desktop app for your operating system. Open the app and sign in with your paid Claude account. Look at the top navigation bar — you will see tabs for Chat, Cowork, and Code. Click Cowork. That single click switches you from regular chat mode into execution mode. Windows users may see a prompt to enable a system feature; click Enable, approve the permissions prompt, and restart your computer. This is a one-time setup.

Choose your model: Inside Cowork, select Sonnet 4.6 to start. It handles competitive research, report generation, content repurposing, and document creation well while giving you more usage per day. Switch to Opus 4.6 when a task requires deeper strategic analysis or exceptional planning ability.

Step 2: Set Up Global Instructions

Global instructions are preferences that apply to every Cowork session, regardless of which folder or project you are working in. Think of them as your permanent briefing to Claude.

Click the settings icon (bottom-left of the Cowork interface), go to Cowork in the settings menu, and find the text field labeled "Global instructions."

Include your name and role, your company or team context, preferred output style (e.g., "Direct and concise. No filler. Use plain language."), safety preferences (e.g., "Always show your plan before taking action. Never delete files without my explicit confirmation."), tools or platforms you regularly work with, and what "done" looks like for your typical work.

Tip: If you are not sure what to write, open a regular Claude Chat session and say: "Based on this description of my role and work, write me a set of global instructions for Claude Cowork." Then paste the result into your settings and refine it over time.

Step 3: Set Up Folder Instructions (CLAUDE.md)

While global instructions apply everywhere, folder instructions are specific to one project or client. They live inside a file called CLAUDE.md placed in the root of whatever folder you point Cowork at. When Cowork opens a folder and finds this file, it reads those instructions automatically.

Include what the folder/project is about, key terminology or definitions, naming conventions for output files, output format preferences, specific rules, what files are important and what can be ignored, and what NOT to do.

Step 4: Organize Your Folder Structure

Cowork does not have access to your entire computer by default. You must explicitly grant access to specific folders. When you select a directory, you will see a permissions prompt with two options: Allow (session only) or Always allow (persistent access).

Critical safety rule: Cowork can modify and delete your files. Before pointing it at any folder containing important work, make a copy first.

For commerce and marketing teams, organize by workflow or client with input files and output files separated:

Documents / Cowork-Projects / Q2-Meta-Reports (with CLAUDE.md, raw-exports, and reports subfolders), Amazon-Review-Mining (with CLAUDE.md, source-reviews, and analysis subfolders), and so on.

Step 5: Write Effective Prompts

The quality of output is directly proportional to the clarity of input. A strong Cowork prompt includes the outcome you want (the specific deliverable, not just the topic), the source material (which files or information to use), the output format (file type and structure), quality criteria (what "good" looks like), and constraints (what to avoid).

Weak prompt: "Analyze this data."

Strong prompt: "Using the CSV files in this folder, create a weekly paid media performance report. Include an executive summary (3-4 sentences), a KPI comparison table (this week vs. last week), the top 3 biggest movers with likely explanations, underperforming campaigns with recommended actions, and a one-paragraph outlook. Output as a PDF. Use plain English suitable for a non-technical client stakeholder."

For any task involving multiple steps or modifying files, always start with: "Before doing the work, show me your plan, your assumptions, and the output files you intend to create."

Step 6: Run Your First Commerce Workflow

Start with a real task you already do every week. Here is one example that delivers immediate value:

Voice-of-Customer Mining from Reviews

Give Cowork a folder containing Amazon review exports, Trustpilot data, support ticket logs, or review screenshots.

Ask: "Analyze all the customer feedback in this folder. Extract: the top 10 purchase motivations, the top 10 objections or concerns, the most common desired outcomes customers describe, the exact language and phrases customers use repeatedly, and trust-building proof points. Preserve the customer's own wording wherever possible. Then create a messaging framework I can use for product pages, email, and ad copy. Output as a structured markdown file and a spreadsheet with theme counts."

Review the plan before execution. After the first output, refine: "Now turn this into separate briefs for our Amazon listing team, email team, and paid creative team."

The difference between mediocre and high-converting product copy is almost always rooted in customer language. This workflow extracts that language at scale from hundreds of reviews — work that would take a human analyst days.

Safety Rules for Commerce Teams

Before scaling, internalize these boundaries: only use Cowork inside approved working folders. Never give it access to passwords, payment data, API keys, or sensitive HR/legal documents. No unsupervised browser tasks on unfamiliar websites. All outputs involving claims, compliance, pricing, or client-facing reporting must be verified by a human before delivery.

Anthropic explicitly states: do not use Cowork for regulated workloads. Cowork activity is not captured in Audit Logs or Compliance API.

The rest of the guide — including 8 more commerce workflow templates, the complete safety and prompt injection guide, skills and plugin setup, parallel multitasking, scheduled tasks, troubleshooting, and a 4-week team rollout plan — you can find here, a free gift from me :)

• OpenAI is letting Criteo sell ChatGPT ad inventory, pushing conversational ads as the next big format while keeping OpenAI itself out of the sales spotlight.

• Marketers are turning Claude into a living strategy brain by building a reusable marketing-strategy skill packed with ICPs, positioning, perceptions and GTM advantages that update over time.

• Anthropic launched Claude Code channels for Telegram and Discord, letting users control coding sessions straight from their phone.

• Cowork Projects is now live, giving teams a cleaner way to keep files, instructions and tasks grouped around one focused area of work.

• New research shows ChatGPT cites just 15% of retrieved pages, with a small group of domains dominating visibility and fan-out queries quietly shaping what gets mentioned.

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