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Claude Cowork

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IntermediatePaidIncluded in Pro ($20/mo), Max 5x ($100/mo), Max 20x ($200/mo), Team (Premium Seat). All tiers have identical features — price affects usage limits only.

An agentic feature in the Claude Desktop app that handles complex, multi-step tasks on your behalf. Hand Claude a task — creating documents, organising files, researching a topic — and it plans, executes, and delivers a polished result. It works with your local files, runs in the background, and can even use your computer directly.

What is Claude Cowork?

Claude Cowork is a feature in the Claude Desktop app that lets you delegate entire tasks to Claude. Instead of going back and forth with prompts, you describe what you need and Claude takes care of the rest — planning the work, breaking it into steps, and delivering a finished result. Think of it less like chatting and more like handing a brief to a capable assistant who gets on with the job.

Cowork works with your local files directly, so there is no need to upload or download documents. It can create polished spreadsheets (with formulas), presentations, and formatted documents, and save them straight to your computer.

Best Use Cases

Creating Professional Documents

Cowork excels at producing finished documents. Describe what you need and it will handle the structure, formatting, and content in one go.

Try this prompt: "Create a one-page CV for a marketing manager with 5 years of experience. Save it as a Word document on my Desktop."

Research and Synthesis

Give Cowork a research brief and it will gather information, cross-reference sources, and produce a structured summary — all without you having to supervise each step.

Try this prompt: "Research the top five project management tools for small teams. Compare their pricing and key features in a spreadsheet."

Recurring and Scheduled Tasks

You can save tasks and have Claude run them on a schedule. This is useful for regular reports, data processing, or any repeating workflow.

Try this prompt: "Every Monday morning, summarise the PDFs in my Reports folder and create a one-page highlights document."

Building Spreadsheets and Presentations

Cowork produces Excel spreadsheets with working formulas and PowerPoint presentations with proper slide layouts — not just plain text approximations.

Try this prompt: "Create a monthly household budget spreadsheet with categories for rent, groceries, transport, utilities, and entertainment. Include SUM formulas for each column."

Getting Started

  1. Download the Claude Desktop app from claude.ai/download (available for macOS and Windows).
  2. Sign in with your account (Cowork is available on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans).
  3. Switch to Cowork mode and describe what you want done. Try: "Organise the files on my Desktop into folders by type and create a summary document listing what went where."

Tips for Beginners

  • Think of Cowork as delegating a task, not having a conversation. Describe the outcome you want and let Claude figure out the steps.
  • You can monitor progress while Claude works, or step away and come back to the finished result.
  • Use Projects to group related tasks together. Claude remembers context within a project, so follow-up requests build on previous work.
  • Start with simple, well-defined tasks (like "create a packing list for a two-week holiday in Spain") before moving to complex multi-step workflows.
  • Cowork requires the Desktop app — it is not available through the web browser at claude.ai.

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