Introduction to Claude Cowork

Cowork is Claude working directly with your files, folders, and apps — reading, editing, and producing real outputs on your machine. Where Chat is a conversation, Cowork is a working session: you describe the task, Claude plans and executes it, and you steer along the way.

This course gets you from first launch to confident daily use. You'll run your first end-to-end task, give Claude standing context with projects, skills, and plugins, bring Claude into Chrome, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, and learn the habits that keep multi-step work safe to share with your team.

Syllabus

Meet Claude Cowork

What Cowork is and how it differs from Chat, how to set it up, and your first end-to-end task: describe it, watch Claude plan and execute, and steer along the way.

Make Claude Cowork yours

Give Claude standing context with global instructions and projects, then build skills and install plugins so Claude knows your vocabulary, your steps, and the outputs you expect.