Claude Cowork Tutorial for Beginners

0:00 If you're still using AI to Google and write emails, then this video is for you.

0:04 You're going to learn how Claude Cowork can literally do your work for you.

0:10 I'll show you four use cases that you can deploy today,

0:13 and with each one, a specific reason that Cowork beats Classic AI Chat.

0:18 I'm David DeWinter, your guide to all things Claude,

0:21 head to the link at the bottom of the screen

0:23 to install Claude Cowork, and let's dive in.

0:25 Once you're here, click the download button

0:27 in the center of the screen, and launch the app.

0:30 Now before we jump in, to follow along, you will need a paid plan.

0:34 So if you don't see Pro or Max here next to your name,

0:38 that means you'll need to upgrade your plan.

0:41 If that's you, settle in because my job is to teach you if it's worth it or not.

0:45 The desktop version of Claude has these three tabs at the top of the screen.

0:49 If you've used Claude before, you've used Chat.

0:52 We'll move past Chat today into this new mode called Cowork.

0:56 Now just like with Chat, you can choose your Claude model.

0:59 I'm going to stick with Sonnet for this tutorial.

1:02 If you've got enough tokens to use Opus, go for it.

1:05 Now here's what's different from Chat.

1:08 Every conversation has access to one or more folders on your computer.

1:11 You choose those folders at the beginning

1:14 of every conversation by clicking this button.

1:16 For this tutorial, I've created a set of sample files,

1:19 which you can access from the resource guide in the description.

1:23 We'll walk through each of these exercises today,

1:25 and I'll start by pointing Cowork at this first folder, 01-contracts.

1:29 Now 95% of you won't read this, but this is a real warning.

1:34 In the course of its job, Claude can permanently delete files or share

1:38 files with third party tools it connects to.

1:41 For this tutorial, that's okay, but be careful in real world use cases.

1:45 Let's put this to work with our first prompt and ask what's in this folder.

1:49 After a couple of seconds, you'll see a response,

1:51 which lists a couple files and subfolder.

1:53 Remember, you can grab every prompt I

1:55 use from the resource guide in the description.

1:58 Now this might not be not seem like much so far,

2:00 but watch what happens when we put this to work.

2:02 Say you want to use AI to write a contract for a new deal.

2:07 You've got notes for that deal, a contract template,

2:10 and a folder of past contracts that you've executed.

2:14 If you were just using Chat, you might use a prompt like this.

2:18 Use these notes to generate a new contract based on the attached template.

2:22 Then you'd attach your notes file and attach the template

2:25 file to the prompt and then send it off.

2:28 In a couple of minutes, you'll get a contract back that actually

2:31 looks pretty decent and you can download it

2:33 using the button up top or using the file card at the end of the chat.

2:38 But a lot of work with AI requires iteration.

2:41 So if you needed to edit this contract using a new

2:44 template or updated notes or even lessons learned from past contracts,

2:48 you need to re-upload any of those files back into the conversation window.

2:53 When you use Cowork though, your approach changes.

2:56 First of all, because Cowork sees all files in this folder,

3:00 you can reference files by typing

3:02 the at symbol and then scrolling through the list.

3:05 And if I submit this prompt right now,

3:07 you won't see much difference between this and the chat version.

3:10 But here's where it gets interesting.

3:12 Every contract you create lives in this folder,

3:15 which means that Claude can learn from all of them.

3:18 So you start to change the way you prompt.

3:20 Here's an example of what I mean.

3:22 In this prompt, we're still asking for that new contract.

3:25 But now I'm telling Claude,

3:27 it should pull terms from past contracts that look similar to this deal.

3:31 And if you find some terms that might apply, let me know what they are.

3:35 Now this is our first big Cowork task.

3:37 And on the right hand side, you see that Cowork has made a plan

3:41 and then shows the progress inside of that progress box.

3:44 As it completes tasks, items get checked off from that box.

3:48 You can also see which files it's used and recognized in the folder itself,

3:53 clicking on this folder icon also opens it up in your finder or explorer.

3:57 And in the context card, you can see what skills it's using.

4:01 We'll talk more about skills later.

4:02 And if you haven't done big tasks before,

4:05 you'll also see progress inside the chat window itself.

4:07 Now this contract still looks similar,

4:09 but this time it pulled three rules from existing contracts.

4:13 It noticed that in outdoor catering events,

4:16 all items must arrive in insulated cooler boxes.

4:19 It included our coffee station setup and our complimentary dozen

4:23 donut holes since this event has over a hundred guests.

4:26 And all of these key points appear in the new contract.

4:29 Now what if you had 50 contracts to look through?

4:33 That's reason number one to use Cowork over chat.

4:36 Chat limits you to 20 file attachments for conversation,

4:39 but Cowork can read your entire folder up to its token limit.

4:43 There's really no set limit on the number of files.

4:46 Now let's do something that chat can't do it all,

4:49 which is work inside your browser.

4:50 Here's a scenario.

4:51 Say your business has a car loan and every

4:54 month your payment covers both principal and interest.

4:58 Only the interest is tax deductible, but your bank shows one payment.

5:02 So when you log this in QuickBooks,

5:05 you need to split it into two lines, principal and interest.

5:09 Now you could read the loan statement and type these numbers in by hand,

5:12 which is fine for one loan.

5:14 But what if you had 50 of those sitting in your bank feed?

5:17 Here's what you need to do.

5:18 First, install the Claude Chrome extension.

5:20 You'll find a link to it inside the resource guide in the description.

5:24 Then head back to Cowork and click the plus

5:27 button in the left sidebar to start a new task.

5:30 From the exercises folder that's also in the resource guide,

5:34 choose number two accounting.

5:36 This folder has five loan statements,

5:38 which correspond to the five transactions we see in QuickBooks.

5:41 Before we get into the prompt,

5:44 make sure you've selected only the accounting folder.

5:47 Cowork likes to select multiple folders by default.

5:49 Now here's the prompt.

5:51 We tell it to use the loan statements

5:54 in this folder to categorize transactions at a specific link.

5:57 We then give it rules on how

5:59 to split the transaction between principal and interest.

6:02 Let's start this off and set up the browser and Claude side by side.

6:07 Claude starts by opening a new tab

6:09 and it's attempting to open QuickBooks in the browser.

6:12 I'll allow it just on this website so it doesn't try to go somewhere else.

6:16 Let's switch to the new tab and see what Claude does.

6:19 It's already made it into QuickBooks and notice that I logged into it

6:22 ahead of time so I didn't have to give Claude my username and password.

6:26 It takes its time reading the page and trying

6:29 to figure out how to interact with it.

6:31 About two minutes in it makes it to the split

6:33 page and then it fills out the amounts and the categories.

6:36 Now the good thing about Claude is it keeps

6:38 checking itself to make sure it got the task right.

6:41 It's not infallible but it gets pretty close most of the time.

6:45 This is the type of task you can leave on autopilot

6:47 and get back to other work or do something else.

6:50 That's case number two where Cowork beats chat.

6:52 It can actually do the work in the browser for just about any web app.

6:57 While categorizing transactions isn't the most

6:59 glamorous part of running a business,

7:01 the money you save in finding tax deductions sure makes up for it.

7:06 That's why for my real business,

7:07 I rely on the sponsor of today's video, QuickBooks Online.

7:11 With it, I can keep track of our products,

7:14 invoice our customers, monitor sales and track our growth,

7:17 plus they've got AI agents to save me even

7:20 more time by auto-categorizing transactions

7:22 and sending custom payment reminders.

7:25 With all my financial data in one place,

7:27 QuickBooks helps me make smarter decisions and gives

7:30 me the confidence that I'm on track.

7:32 Check out the link in the description below to get

7:34 a discount off your first three months of QuickBooks Online.

7:37 This next one is where Cowork starts pulling away from other AI tools.

7:42 We're going to build a PowerPoint presentation,

7:44 but we're going to do it in two steps so you can see something important.

7:49 To get prepared, start a new task inside

7:51 of Cowork and then set your folder context to 03-slides.

7:55 Now, this presentation is to teach my team how to use Claude on the web,

8:00 so step one is research.

8:02 And instead of doing the research ourselves,

8:04 we're going to outsource this to Claude.

8:06 We'll just point it to two sources.

8:08 One is a previous YouTube video that I've done on Claude,

8:10 which you can find in the top right, and the other is the official Claude Help.

8:14 While I get this started,

8:16 notice that I'm not asking for the PowerPoint presentation right away.

8:19 I'm asking for an outline which I want written in a file called outline.md.

8:24 This takes a few minutes to run, and here's where it gets good.

8:28 The outline should appear on the right side of the screen.

8:32 This is called a markdown file.

8:33 Now, just like Microsoft Word and Google Docs have headings,

8:37 bold text, links, etc.

8:39 Markdown is a machine and human readable

8:42 text file that also has this formatting.

8:45 In fact, you can see it's not magic.

8:47 Go to the folder, right click it, and open it with Notepad.

8:50 You can read it and edit it before Claude does anything else with it.

8:54 Now, let's say you're looking through this outline and you

8:56 see something that you want to cut from the presentation.

8:59 You'll see different slides in your outline,

9:01 but I'm going to cut this slide on artifacts.

9:04 When I save this, Claude Cowork now sees this updated file.

9:07 In chat, you'd have to download it, edit it, and then re-upload it.

9:12 It's time to make our slides.

9:13 Copy and paste this prompt from the resource guide.

9:16 This is not a prompting tutorial,

9:17 but there are four things I want to call out to you.

9:20 This time, we're clear that we're creating

9:22 a PowerPoint presentation based on the outline.

9:25 Number two, we explicitly do not want Claude to research more for each slide.

9:29 Number three, I've included a template that I've downloaded

9:31 from the internet inside of this folder that I wanted to use.

9:35 And number four, we want more pictures on the slides and fewer words.

9:39 Now, if you're doing this live with me, this is a good time to take a coffee

9:42 break because this could take about 15 minutes.

9:44 We'll see you when it comes back.

9:46 In case you're just enjoying the show, this is the template that we gave it,

9:50 and this is the presentation that we got.

9:52 Obviously, it got the template, the colors, and fonts right,

9:55 but let's see what else it did right.

9:57 We do see a lot of the talk track is

9:59 in the presenter notes and not the slides, just like we asked.

10:02 It's also chosen some interesting images for a few slides.

10:05 It also stuck to our 13 slide outline,

10:08 including removing that slide on artifacts.

10:10 It doesn't get the layout right on every slide,

10:12 as you can see here, but man, this is a great start.

10:17 So through this, you've seen reason number three that Cowork out shines chat.

10:20 When your workflow has multiple steps and you

10:22 want to check the work in between them.

10:25 If we were in the chatbot interface and needed to revise the outline,

10:28 we'd have to download it, then edit it, then reupload it for this to work.

10:32 And Cowork just streamlines that away.

10:35 We've created documents, controlled a browser, and built a presentation.

10:38 Now let's tackle data, and these data sets have a twist.

10:42 In exercise folder number four,

10:44 we have three reports extracted from three different tools.

10:48 Account data from our CRM,

10:50 sales data from our e-commerce engine, and survey data.

10:54 Our goal is to join them all together and see

10:57 how sales and customer satisfaction trend across where we do business.

11:01 Obviously, you could do this by hand,

11:03 but that's not why you're watching this video.

11:05 So let's head back to Cowork and then start a new task.

11:09 Now change your folder context to 04-data,

11:11 and then grab this prompt from the resource guide.

11:14 This is a hefty prompt, so let's submit it,

11:17 and then while it's running, we'll go through it together.

11:19 First up, we are creating a new Excel file called Dashboard that has four tabs.

11:24 The first three tabs have the data

11:26 from the original three files I just showed you.

11:28 And then the fourth tab joins all of it

11:31 into a master table based on the customer email.

11:33 That tab also needs a horizontal bar chart that shows the average NPS by state.

11:40 And finally, we should be able to filter that data

11:42 by month so that we can see changes over time.

11:46 After a few minutes, you'll see a preview of the file that you

11:48 just created on the right hand side of the screen.

11:51 You'll see all four tabs created,

11:53 including the three from our original files as well as the Dashboard tab.

11:57 This gives you a sense of what you're creating,

11:59 but you probably just want to go into the Excel file directly.

12:02 In this view, it's clear that it's met the goal.

12:05 It's got the bar chart of the average NPS by state,

12:08 and we can filter by month using the dropdown.

12:11 So why use Cowork over chat here?

12:13 Well, next month you'll get three new files,

12:15 and you don't want another Dashboard Excel file.

12:18 You want to update this one.

12:20 In chat, you'd have to re-upload this Dashboard and re-explain the whole setup.

12:24 So that's the reason number four.

12:26 When you're building something you'll come back to, like this Dashboard page,

12:29 Cowork keeps your files where they are and lets you build on them.

12:33 Here's the twist though.

12:35 What if you never had to write that prompt again?

12:38 Go back to the exercises folder and open 05-more-data.

12:42 Pull both the April and the May folder inside the 04-data folder.

12:47 Then I'll head back to Cowork.

12:49 Make sure you are still pointed at that data folder.

12:52 And this time, instead of using a prompt to create the Dashboard folder,

12:56 I'm using one to update it based on the April folder only.

13:00 You can grab this prompt from the resource guide.

13:02 No surprise, you'll get the updated file in a few minutes.

13:05 But imagine doing this every month.

13:08 It's very easy to lose track of prompts like this.

13:11 Well, what if you could just say update the report and Claude knew what to do?

13:15 That's called a skill.

13:17 So after you've completed a task,

13:19 literally tell Cowork to turn the update into a skill.

13:22 Then Cowork reviews your conversation history

13:24 to make sure it understands the task.

13:27 If it doesn't, it may ask you some follow-up questions.

13:30 Then it creates the skill and makes sure that it works.

13:34 It does its own checking, but it also wants your help.

13:37 And that's what this eval review screen is for.

13:39 An eval is just a prompt and a result.

13:42 So for all of the evals that Claude presents to you,

13:45 it would like you to verify that it actually created the right output.

13:48 I'll leave that verification step as an exercise for you at home.

13:52 When you're done, you can either click submit all reviews

13:55 or you can tell Claude to package up the skill.

13:58 Then when you have a skill card in the chat

14:01 that looks like this, click the button save skill.

14:04 That installs your skill.

14:05 So now you can click on new task, leave it as the same folder,

14:10 and then type slash your skill name to invoke your skill.

14:14 Now instead of typing that whole prompt again,

14:16 I can just say dashboard updater and then do this with the May folder.

14:20 And voila, your dashboard updates are done in less than two minutes.

14:24 Once you install a skill,

14:25 it's available on any computer with Cowork installed and Claude on the web.

14:30 Now, you've seen Claude Cowork create documents,

14:33 navigate your browser, build presentations, and analyze your data.

14:37 All from a folder on your desktop.

14:40 This literally is a game changer.

14:42 So post your questions down in the comments below

14:44 and check out QuickBooks Online with a link in the description.

14:48 I'm David DeWinter, and I'll see you in the next video.