Welcome to the MonDive

Today in MonDive, we’re diving into Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s work-focused AI mode inside the Claude Desktop app, built to go beyond chatting and actually handle tasks across your folders, files, and workflows.

We’ll cover what Claude Cowork is, how to set it up properly, and practical workflows you can start using right away, with step-by-step walkthroughs you can follow and copy. By the end, you’ll be ready to get Claude Cowork running and start using it for your day-to-day work.

Alright, let’s dive in.

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Why Claude Cowork?

Claude Cowork is built for tasks that need action, not just answers. It can work through the Claude Desktop app, use folders, approved apps, and most importantly use your browser, then complete real tasks on a computer. That makes it useful for work that normally takes time, steps, and manual effort. It works virtually like a personal assistant.

That is what makes it different from tools like ChatGPT, Claude Chat, or Gemini.

Setting Up Claude Cowork

To set up Claude Cowork, first install the Claude Desktop app on macOS or Windows, open it, and sign in to your Claude account.
You’ll need at least the Pro plan to access Claude Cowork and Claude Code.

That small monthly cost can go a long way, because Cowork can help with the kind of day-to-day work that usually takes up hours, like organizing files, handling repetitive tasks, summarizing information, and supporting your workflow like an extra team member.

Once you’re inside the desktop app, click Claude Cowork from the top section to begin setup.

The main thing to remember is that Cowork runs through the Desktop app, not like a normal browser chatbot. Ples be noted that the Claude Desktop app needs to stay open, and your computer needs to stay awake while Cowork is working on tasks.

Prepare Claude Cowork for Real Work

1. To start, click Work in a project and choose a folder. This gives Claude Cowork the files and context it needs to work on.

By selecting a folder, you give it a dedicated workspace where the project context stays organized, making future work in that same folder more consistent and relevant.

2. You can also set up Global Instructions from Settings to make Cowork more consistent across different tasks. This part is optional, but it helps a lot when you want Claude to follow the same working style every time.

Sample Prompt:

## Prevent accidental damage
- Before deleting, overwriting, or renaming any existing file, show me what will change and wait for confirmation.
- Never modify files outside the current working folder unless I explicitly ask you to.

## Keep things organized
When creating new files, use the naming format YYYY-MM-DD-descriptive-name.
At the end of a task, list all files you created or modified with their locations.

## Control the pace of autonomous work
For multi-step tasks, outline your plan first and wait for my approval before executing. After each major step, briefly summarize what you did and what's next."

3. If you want Cowork to work beyond local project files, you can connect external tools through Connectors. From the plus icon, open Connectors, then click Manage connectors to link tools like Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, or Slack so Claude can pull in more context from your day-to-day workflow.

Using Claude Cowork to Find AI News

We need to read a lot of AI news to run the newsletter, and we spend hours every week doing so. We’ll try to do that research with Claude CoWork, just to demonstrate that it can handle real tasks.

Step 1: Select the working folder.
Start a new Cowork task and choose the folder where you want the final PDF to be saved. This gives Claude Cowork a dedicated workspace for the task.

Step 2: Add Google Chrome as a connector.
Claude Cowork can work directly inside the browser from a prompt, which is what makes this workflow so powerful. It only works on the sites that are given permission, so if access is allowed for X, it can work on X without getting access to every other website.

To set it up, click the plus icon, open Connectors, and choose Manage connectors. From there, install and enable Claude in Chrome, which adds the Chrome extension Claude needs for this workflow.

Step 3: Turn on the settings Claude needs.
Open Settings from the account menu, then go to Claude in Chrome and make sure the extension is allowed. After that, go to General under the Desktop app section and turn on Computer Use. These settings make sure Claude Cowork can work through Chrome and interact with your computer during the workflow.

Step 4: Give Claude Cowork the prompt.
Now ask Claude to open X, find strong AI news posts from the last 24 hours, and turn them into a clean news roundup saved as a PDF in your selected folder.

Sample Prompt:

Open x.com in Google Chrome, go to my feed, scroll and find 6–8 high-performing and highest-viewed posts about AI news from the last 24 hours.

For each post, create a news entry with:
- the original X post link at the top
- a clear title
- a short body summarizing the update in a simple, professional news style

Compile all of them into one document, save it as a PDF in my selected folder, and title it ai-news.pdf.

Step 5: Let Claude do the work.
Once the task starts, Claude can open X in Chrome, browse the feed, collect the posts, and work through the steps inside the task. You can see the progress panel that highlights Claude is actively moving through the workflow instead of just generating text. Anthropic also notes that Cowork can use browser tools and computer use together while a task is running.

Step 6: Open the saved file in your folder.
Once Claude finishes the workflow, open your selected folder to find the final file it created. This is where you can quickly confirm that ai-news.pdf was saved successfully and is ready to review.

Step 7: Schedule this exact workflow.

After Claude finishes the task, click the dropdown at the top of the same workflow and choose the option to schedule it. This lets you reuse the exact prompt and setup you already used.

Sample Prompt :

/schedule run this every morning at 7AM and keep saving the pdf file on that dedicated folder.

Step 8: View and manage scheduled workflow.
Open the Scheduled tab from the left sidebar to see the workflow you just saved. From here, you can review the task, edit the schedule later, or run it again manually whenever you want.

Turning a Messy Folder Into an Organized Excel Summary

Claude Cowork can work directly on your computer, create folders, organize files, read documents and images, and generate structured outputs like Excel sheets without manual work. In this use case, I’m turning a messy invoice folder into clean, organized data.

Step 1: Select the working folder.
Start a new Cowork task and choose the folder that contains your invoices. In this case, that would be your Downloads folder or the specific invoice folder inside it. This gives Claude Cowork access to the files it needs to sort and summarize.

Step 2: Give Claude Cowork the prompt.
Now ask Claude to read the invoices, create a dedicated subfolder for them, sort the invoice files into that subfolder, and generate an Excel sheet with the key details.

Sample Prompt:

In my Downloads folder, create a new subfolder called Invoices Summary.

Then:

1. Find all PNG files related to invoices in Downloads, especially files titled invoice

2. Copy those invoice PNG files into the Invoices Summary folder

3. Read each invoice image and extract these details where available:

   - category

   - vendor or restaurant name

   - date

   - subtotal

   - tax

   - total

4. Create an Excel sheet with one row per invoice and clear column headers

5. Save the Excel sheet inside the same Invoices Summary folder

Important:

- Do not delete, move, or change anything else in my Downloads folder

Step 3: Watch Claude work on the computer.
At this stage, Claude Cowork is using the computer directly like a working assistant. It can open the invoice files, select them, organize them into the new folder, read the details from each one, and build the spreadsheet while the whole process happens on screen.

Step 4: Open the subfolder and review the Excel file.
After Claude finishes, open the new subfolder and then open the Excel file inside it. You’ll see all the invoices organized neatly in one place, and you can edit the spreadsheet yourself anytime if you want.

Know someone who may be interested?