Claude Cowork Basics

8 examples to get you started with Claude Cowork - 5 basic and 3 intermediate.

Prerequisites

• A paid Claude plan. Cowork is available across all paid plans as of its April 2026 general availability.
• A local folder you can point Claude at, ideally one scoped to just the task you have in mind rather than a broad, general-purpose folder.
• A few minutes to review Claude's output before you treat a task as finished. Autonomous file access still benefits from a human check at the end.

Basic Examples

1. Starting a Cowork Task

The first step is choosing the folder Cowork will work inside.

When you start a Cowork task, you'll see a folder-selection step before anything else happens - something like: "Choose a folder for Claude to work in," followed by your operating system's normal folder picker.

• Pick the narrowest folder that actually contains what the task needs, not a parent folder that also holds unrelated files.
• Nothing happens until you confirm the folder - Claude cannot see or touch anything before that grant is made.
• You can back out and pick a different folder if the one you first selected turns out to be too broad.

Related: How Claude Cowork's Local Folder Access Works - the mental model behind this grant

2. Writing Your First Task Prompt

Once the folder is granted, you describe what you want done, much like a normal chat message, but now Claude can act on it directly.

A simple first prompt might read: "Read through the files in this folder and give me a one-paragraph summary of what each one covers."

• Keep the first prompt narrow and read-only so you can see how Cowork behaves before asking it to make changes.
• Claude will typically respond with a short plan before it starts working through the files.
• You can watch progress as it goes rather than waiting for a single final answer.

3. Reviewing What Changed

After a task that edits files, Cowork surfaces a summary of what it did, listing which files were read, which were edited, and which were newly created.

• Treat this summary as your checkpoint - read it before trusting the task is done, not after something looks wrong.
• If a change looks off, you can ask Claude to explain its reasoning for that specific edit before deciding whether to keep it.
• Version control or a backup of the folder beforehand makes this review step much less stressful, since you can always compare against the original.

Related: Cowork Safety Checklist Before Granting Folder Access - what to check before you even get to this step

4. Asking Claude to Create New Files

Beyond editing what's already there, Cowork can create files that didn't exist before, like a summary document, a reorganized index, or a new draft based on existing material.

A prompt like: "Create a single index.md file that lists every document in this folder with a one-line description of each" asks for exactly this.

• New files appear inside the same granted folder - Cowork won't place output somewhere else.
• Ask for a specific filename if you care about naming, otherwise Claude will choose something reasonable on its own.
• Review new files the same way you'd review edits - creation isn't automatically lower-risk than editing.

5. Narrowing the Task When the First Try Is Too Broad

If a first prompt produces more (or less) than you wanted, you can refine it in the same session rather than starting over.

For example, following up with: "Only apply that reorganization to the reports subfolder, leave everything else as-is" tightens the scope mid-task.

• Cowork keeps context from earlier in the same task, so a follow-up doesn't need to repeat everything from scratch.
• Narrowing the prompt doesn't change the underlying folder grant - it changes what Claude chooses to act on within it.
• If a task is going in the wrong direction entirely, stopping it and starting a fresh, more specific prompt is often faster than trying to steer it back.

Intermediate Examples

6. Running a Multi-Step Reorganization

A more involved task asks Claude to plan and carry out several dependent steps in sequence, such as: "Go through every file in this folder, group related documents into subfolders by topic, rename anything with an unclear filename, and produce a short changelog of what moved."

• This is the kind of task Cowork's multi-step execution is built for - Claude plans the grouping first, then executes the moves and renames.
• Expect a longer run than a single-file edit, since the task touches many files in sequence.
• The changelog you asked for doubles as your review checklist afterward.

Related: Types of Tasks Well-Suited to Claude Cowork - more examples of tasks that fit this shape

7. Letting Cowork Split Work Across Subagents

For a task with clearly independent pieces, like summarizing ten unrelated reports, you can let Cowork coordinate subagents to work on pieces in parallel rather than one at a time.

A prompt like: "Summarize each report in this folder into its own summary file - these can be done independently" signals that kind of parallelizable structure.

• You don't have to explicitly ask for subagents - Cowork recognizes when a task's pieces are independent and can split accordingly.
• Parallel work finishes faster than working through the same files one by one in sequence.
• Each subagent still operates inside the same folder grant as the overall task, so the scoping considerations from earlier examples still apply.

Related: Understanding Cowork Subagent Coordination for Parallel Tasks - how this parallel splitting actually works

8. Turning a One-Off Task into a Scheduled Task

Once a Cowork prompt reliably does what you want, you can package it into a Scheduled Task so it runs again on a cadence without you re-triggering it each time.

For example, a prompt that checks a folder of incoming files and files them into subfolders by type could run daily instead of only when you remember to run it manually.

• Choose the cadence, hourly, daily, or weekly, based on how often new material actually shows up in the folder.
• A Scheduled Task keeps full access to connected tools and Skills on every run, the same as the original manual run.
• Because it runs unattended, it's worth being more conservative about the folder scope than you might be for a one-off task you're watching in real time.

Related: Configuring Scheduled Tasks: Hourly, Daily, and Weekly Cadences - the full walkthrough for setting one up

Stack versions: Written against the Claude model lineup current as of ~June 2026 - Claude Fable 5, Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Sonnet 5 (the default), and Claude Haiku 4.5. Model names, pricing, and product features move quickly - verify current specifics at platform.claude.com/docs before relying on them.