The argument in one line.
Claude Cowork becomes a fully functional AI operating system for your business when you chain together 13 specific features—from workspace folders and markdown files to live artifacts and scheduled automations—rather than using it as a simple chatbot.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A solo founder or small business owner running operations with minimal staff who uses Claude daily and wants to systematize repetitive workflows.
- Someone already comfortable with Claude's basic chat interface who's heard about Cowork but hasn't explored its file-system integration and automation capabilities.
- A content creator, consultant, or agency operator managing multiple client projects who needs to swap context between different folder-based workspaces efficiently.
SKIP IF…
- You've never used Claude before or are still deciding between Claude and other AI tools — this assumes desktop app familiarity and focuses on advanced features.
- You work primarily in fiction, creative writing, or domains where Cowork's file-system and automation features don't apply to your actual workflow.
The full version, fast.
Claude Cowork becomes a full operating system for your business only when you stack all thirteen features together, not just the obvious three. The walkthrough organizes them into five phases: foundation (workspace folder, CLAUDE.md instruction file, memory.md, and per-area projects so context and tokens stay clean), building blocks (reusable skills triggered by slash commands, bundled into shareable plugins), real-life reach (native connectors plus Zapier for 9,000+ apps, Claude in Chrome for browser actions, and computer use for desktop control), real superpowers (live artifacts that pull fresh data on open, and scheduled tasks that run skills while you sleep), and personalization. Build your own skills from your actual daily workflow rather than copying others, and Cowork starts replacing employees.
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00:00 – 00:34
01 · Intro
Promise: 13 superpowers, live demos, full system by the end.
00:34 – 00:56
02 · Phase 1: Foundation
Four basics most people skip inside Cowork.
00:56 – 04:53
03 · Superpower #1: Folder Workspace
Cowork lives in a real local folder. Everything saves. Swap folders to swap project context.
04:53 – 07:43
04 · Superpower #2: CLAUDE.md
One file that teaches Claude everything. Voice, rules, context, tools. Loaded every message.
07:43 – 09:27
05 · Superpower #3: memory.md
Auto-written facts across sessions. Audit weekly. Tell it what to remember explicitly.
09:27 – 13:25
06 · Superpower #4: Projects
One Cowork, many brains. Each project gets its own CLAUDE.md and memory.
13:25 – 17:23
07 · Superpower #5: Skills
Reusable workflows triggered by keyword. Demo: PDF guide skill produces a polished PDF in 2 min.
17:23 – 18:25
08 · Superpower #6: Slash Commands
Type / to fire any skill instantly. /research, /slides, /inbox-sweep shown live.
18:25 – 19:36
09 · Superpower #7: Plugins
Bundled skill sets from the marketplace or custom-built. Demo: Legal plugin with 13 skills.
19:36 – 23:47
10 · Superpower #8: Connectors
Native app integrations. Gmail, Slack, Calendar, Notion, GitHub, Bitly. Zapier MCP for 9000+ more.
23:47 – 25:50
11 · Superpower #9: Claude in Chrome
Browser extension lets Cowork use any website. Demo: pulls last post from School community.
25:50 – 27:04
12 · Superpower #10: Computer Use
Full desktop access. Demo: Claude finds a Videos folder in Finder without user touching the mouse.
27:04 – 30:14
13 · Superpower #11: Live Artifacts
HTML dashboards that auto-refresh from connectors on open. Bitly dashboard, Stripe revenue, morning command center.
30:14 – 32:45
14 · Superpower #12: Scheduled Tasks
Cron-style automations. Daily wrap-up audits Cowork, generates HTML report, DMs Slack at 6PM.
32:45 – 33:52
15 · Superpower #13: Build Your Own
Brain-dump your daily work, ask Claude to find automation candidates and build skills from them.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Claude Cowork lives inside a real folder on your computer, which means everything it generates is saved locally and accessible outside the app.
- The CLAUDE.md file is loaded on every single message in a Cowork session — making it the highest-leverage investment in any Cowork setup.
- Using separate workspace folders for each business area prevents context bleed between projects and keeps each session scoped correctly.
- A CLAUDE.md file functions like a permanent employee onboarding document — unlike a human employee, it never forgets what it read.
- Live artifacts allow you to see a rendered preview of whatever Cowork is building while it builds it, without leaving the Cowork interface.
- Scheduled automations inside Cowork can run tasks on a timer without you being present — the system executes while you do other work.
- Adding MCP connectors to Cowork gives it access to external services like Notion, Airtable, or custom APIs — making it more than a local file editor.
- Claude can read files you already have in the workspace folder and use them as context, meaning your existing work immediately becomes part of the intelligence.
- Swapping workspace folders effectively swaps the entire context of the session — you are not just changing a directory, you are changing what Claude knows.
- Writing rules and non-negotiables in CLAUDE.md prevents Claude from repeating the same pattern mistakes across sessions without being corrected each time.
- A style guide stored as a separate file and referenced in CLAUDE.md — rather than pasted inline — keeps the instruction file lean without losing context.
- Running your entire business with no employees becomes feasible when Cowork handles research, drafting, scheduling, and output formatting automatically.
Thirteen Claude Cowork Features Most Users Never Touch
Cowork system guide
Brock Mesarich walks through all 13 Cowork superpowers — from CLAUDE.md to scheduled automations — showing that most users are running at roughly 20% of the platform's actual capability.
01Intro
- Thirteen superpowers, live demos, full system by the end — most people are using three of them
03Superpower #1: Folder Workspace
- Cowork lives in a real local folder — everything saves, swap folders to swap project context
- The folder is the unit of context, not the account — you can have as many distinct brains as you have folders
04Superpower #2: CLAUDE.md
- One file teaches Claude your voice, rules, context, and available tools — loaded with every message automatically
- This is the highest-leverage file in the system — investing 30 minutes here saves hours of re-explaining
05Superpower #3: memory.md
- Auto-written facts accumulate across sessions — the system learns what it learns without you managing it
- Audit weekly and tell Claude explicitly what to remember to keep the memory accurate and relevant
06Superpower #4: Projects
- One Cowork account can run many projects, each with its own CLAUDE.md and memory
- Isolating contexts prevents one project's rules from polluting another
07Superpower #5: Skills
- Skills are reusable workflows triggered by a keyword — a PDF guide skill produces a polished document in two minutes
- Build skills for anything you do more than once — the repetition is where the time savings compound
08Superpower #6: Slash Commands
- Type / to fire any skill instantly — /research, /slides, /inbox-sweep are all one-keystroke workflows
- The command interface removes the friction of explaining what you want every time
09Superpower #7: Plugins
- Plugins bundle skill sets from a marketplace — a legal plugin with 13 skills installs as a single unit
- Custom plugins let you package your own skill sets for distribution or reuse across projects
10Superpower #8: Connectors
- Gmail, Slack, Calendar, Notion, GitHub are native integrations — Zapier MCP extends to 9,000 more apps
- Connectors are what make Cowork an operating system rather than a chat interface
11Superpower #9: Claude in Chrome
- The browser extension lets Cowork read and interact with any website — no API required
- Pulling content from any live page makes the web a data source for every workflow
12Superpower #10: Computer Use
- Full desktop access — Claude can navigate Finder, open files, and operate any application
- The demo shows Claude finding a Videos folder in Finder without the user touching the mouse
13Superpower #11: Live Artifacts
- HTML dashboards that auto-refresh from connectors on open — Stripe revenue, Bitly stats, morning command center
- Live artifacts turn Cowork into a real-time business dashboard, not just a task runner
14Superpower #12: Scheduled Tasks
- Cron-style automations run without user input — daily wrap-up, HTML report, Slack DM at 6PM is a working example
- Scheduled tasks are the difference between a tool you use and a system that runs itself
15Superpower #13: Build Your Own
- Brain-dump your daily work to Claude and ask it to identify automation candidates and build skills from them
- Your workflow is the raw material — the 13th superpower is turning your own patterns into reusable systems
Terms worth knowing.
- Claude Cowork
- A mode in the Claude desktop app that connects Claude directly to a folder on the user's computer, allowing it to read, write, and organize files in a local workspace — unlike the web chat version which only produces text responses.
- Workspace folder
- A local directory on a user's computer that Claude Cowork reads from and writes to, serving as the shared file system between the user and the AI across a project.
- CLAUDE.md (Cowork)
- A Markdown file placed inside a Cowork workspace folder that contains persistent instructions and project context Claude reads automatically at the start of every session in that folder.
- Live artifact
- An interactive, rendered output (such as a live website preview, chart, or data visualization) that Claude generates and displays directly inside the chat interface rather than as plain text.
- Scheduled automation (Claude)
- A Claude feature that runs a predefined workflow or routine on a schedule — such as daily or weekly — without the user needing to manually trigger each session.
- Context switching
- The act of swapping the active workspace folder in Claude Cowork to load a different project, effectively changing the AI's working context and available files for that session.
- Claude desktop app
- The native macOS and Windows application for Claude that enables local file access through Cowork mode, as opposed to the browser-based Claude.ai web interface.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
00:05
“Most people are using maybe three. I have been using Claude Cowork every single day for the last three months, and it is helping me run my entire business with no employees.”
05:13
“One file that teaches Claude everything. This tells Claude who you are, lays out your different projects and goals, and sets the rules.”
09:27
“One Cowork, many brains.”
14:17
“Gone are the days that you need to write out a very comprehensive prompt into Claude in order to get a good response because skills make it very simple.”
27:07
“Live artifacts are like mini applications you could have directly in Claude that pulls all the information from your different applications.”
30:40
“I do not need to trigger them manually. They just automatically run at a given time.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
00:00Cloud Cowork is by far one of the most powerful AI tools that you can use right now, but only if you actually know how to use it. That's because there are 13 specific ways to give Cloud Cowork superpowers, and most people are using maybe three.
00:13I've been using Cloud Cowork every single day for the last three months, and it's helping me run my entire business with no employees. And I've personally had to learn some things the hard way. So in this video, I'm gonna walk you through all 13 superpowers and show you live demos.
00:27And by the end, you'll have a full Cowork system that will make you and your team way more productive. So without further ado, let's get into it. Alright.
00:34So we first of all need to talk about phase number one, and that is the foundation. So there's four basics to the foundations that most people inside of Claude skip. And if you're using CoWork, you really need to nail these.
00:47Otherwise, the rest of your system is just not gonna be working efficiently. You're gonna waste your money. You're gonna not get the same results, all these different things.
00:54So we need to nail this first. And the first part of our foundation is our folder workspace, and we need to set this up properly. And I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that right now.
01:05So first of all, Cowork lives inside of a real folder, and this is what sets Cowork apart from normal Claude or Chatcha VT or different applications of AI because you can work inside of the folders on your computer. You can make changes. You could add different things to those folders.
01:21All those different things are possible inside CoWork, and everything you generate inside of there is saved into this workspace folder. Claude can read and write into the same folder, and you can swap folders in order to swap different context across your projects. So in order to show you exactly how this works, I'm going to create a folder and show you how to do the exact same thing inside of Cowork.
01:40The first thing that we need to do is download the Claud desktop app. Because if you do not have the desktop app downloaded, you can't use Cowork, and this entire video will be pointless. So there is a link in the description to download it.
01:52And then once you have it downloaded, make sure to open it up. From here, this is the interface we're gonna have inside of Claude if we've never used this before. This is chat mode.
02:00So this is basically like using normal Claude on the web or even using Chatcha b t, for example. You can just type with it, and it will spit out text responses to you. It's pretty basic.
02:10And in order to change which mode we're in, there is this little selector bar right here. So first of all, we have chat mode, then this other one is co work, and then clod code, but we are gonna be specifically focusing on Claude co work in this video. Next, we wanna click on this little button.
02:24And from here, we're gonna have this interface, and this is where we need to set up our workspace folder. So let me show you how to do that right now. We are gonna see this little text box here, and what we wanna focus on right now is working inside of a project.
02:39So make sure to click on this, and you could see I have a couple of different folders on my desktop that are already right here. For the sake of this, let's go ahead and start from scratch. So what I'm gonna do is click on choose a different folder, and we're just gonna add a new folder to our desktop.
02:53Let's just call this Claude Cowork, and then we are going to click on create, and then make sure to select open. From here, we need to allow Claude to make changes to this folder so that way it could pull information from it as well as add different files to that folder. So click on allow, and now we are gonna see that this folder is selected.
03:12We could also open this and select other folders as well. So select as many as you want. I highly suggest creating one specific for co work and then start from there.
03:19Real quick, if you guys want my full Claude Co work course, make sure to join my school community. We have tons of different modules in the classroom inside of here, as well as there are tons of different business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals that are using Claude Cowork every single day in the community. And on top of that, if you are using Claude, I do share the 50 Claude skills that I can't live without that you could download and begin using in your business automatically, and they're all inside of the school community.
03:42Also, absolutely no pressure at all. I have some amazing free content on this YouTube channel that I'm gonna continue to share every single day, so make sure to subscribe if you want free content as well. So in order to show you where I could find this on my desktop, I now have a new folder on the bottom right hand side called Claude Cowork three.
03:58I could go ahead. I could open this up. And as you can see, we have this folder.
04:01Nothing is inside of here yet, But as we begin using Cowork more and more and we add different files, it's gonna be stored directly right here, and we could always access this on our computer. Now let's say we wanna change which folder we're working inside of. It's as simple as just coming back here.
04:16You can see we obviously have this one pulled up. I could go and I could select other ones. So Claude code short system is a big one that I use for all of my short form content.
04:24I would just select allow, and I now have both of these selected. And if I just wanna work in this one right here, I could deselect this one. And now I'm just working inside of the Claude code short system.
04:34And to show you my extremely messy folder, this is what that workspace looks like. Like I said, I've been using this for months now, so I have tons of different things in here. I have my memory right here.
04:43I have different screenshots. I have all of my outputs saved. This is pretty messy, but this is why I highly suggest using specific workspace folders for different areas of your business.
04:51Alright. So part two of our foundation that we need to understand. This is a really big one.
04:55If you've used Cowork before, this probably sounds like a no brainer. So don't worry because we're gonna move into the more unknown features later on in this video, so feel free to skip past this if you already know what a Claude MD is. But a Claude MD file is one file that teaches Claude everything.
05:09This basically sits inside of our workspace folder that we just set up, and this tells Claude who you are, lays out your different projects and goals, and sets the rules on how Claude is gonna interact with you. And a key thing here is that this file is loaded every single message you have in that specific workspace. Here is a great visual of what a Claude MD file is.
05:29So we want to actually add our voice and our tone. We wanna add our rules, our specific context, preferences, and any of the tools that we're using, and this is basically our project's instruction manual.
05:39This is basically, like, our instruction guide or our manual a new employee that we're onboarding. But the best part about this is instead of training an employee one time and having to constantly remind them on how to do something, this is set in stone, and it will read this and understand it every single time that you interact with it.
05:57In order to show you exactly what I mean, I'm inside of my YouTube videos project. And later on in this video, I'm gonna show you how exactly to leverage projects. But the key thing that we want to focus on right here is the ClotMD file that is attached to this project.
06:11So if I click on this, this is my markdown file. This is the set of instructions for this specific folder inside of Cowork. So I'm not gonna bore you with all the details and break this down, but here's what this says.
06:22What it is is Brock's all things YouTube space, the hub for planning, creating, and analyzing YouTube content. It breaks down my primary workflow, breaks down everything that's in this folder, etcetera. So all this stuff is necessary information that is loaded every single message that I give Claude.
06:37So that way, I don't need to micromanage it and tell it how to explain things every single time or give it proper context. Now the big thing is is you need to craft your Claude MD file carefully. So I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that right now and even give you a step by step guide on exactly how to do it.
06:53So I do want to say you definitely can ask Claude to help you set up the MD file. But if you're lazy like me and you wanna do it the exact same way I did with this custom skill I created, then here's exactly how to do it. Alright.
07:05So first of all, if you want this, this will be in my community. And once you're inside of here, it's under classroom. And I basically link all of the different resources from my videos here.
07:13So you would come to the 13 Claude co work superpowers. And then right here, we have a setup guide, basically breaking down exactly how this works. And then underneath that, you're gonna see the Claude MD setup skill.
07:25So all you have to do is download the zip file and then upload it into Cowork. Then it's gonna walk you through a couple of different things step by step, and then you will have a Claude MD file just like this, and it should be functioning properly. This is by far one of the most important things you need to set up inside of Claude CoWork, and that's why I wanted to show it to you very early in this video.
07:43Alright. So now that we have our Claude MD file situated, we now want to move on to the next step in our foundation, which is our memory MD file.
07:52So this is essentially how Claude writes facts about you and reads them the next time that you interact with it. This is how it's gonna remember session context over time. This right here is a perfect visual.
08:03Session number one, it automatically gets added to the memory MD. Same thing with session number two. Same thing with session number three.
08:09Every single time you interact with it, it creates this markdown file that is stored within your workspace folder that it could reference whenever it needs to. So if you have a specific client project or something, it will remember and pick up where you left off. So for the memory MD, there's really not too much for us to talk about aside from the fact that we really wanna make sure tell it what we want it to remember.
08:29So if you ever do something specific or you wanted to remember something about you, just say remember this when it actually matters, and it will 100% save that to the memory markdown file. For example, saying something like posts Tuesdays at 9AM beats something like makes videos, for example. And then another key thing here is that make sure to audit this file every week or a couple of weeks and prune what's stale because, otherwise, it can become a bit bloated.
08:52So let me show you exactly where to find the clotMD inside of Cowork now. Literally, for any of the tasks or chats you have inside of Cowork, you could just come here and say you come here and just say, show me my memory MD, and it will pull it up, and you could actually view it. So as we can see right here, there is this memory dot m d file.
09:10I can just click on this, and here's the memory index. I could basically see everything that it saved. It even has sub markdown folders here, so it's not just a bloated memory markdown file.
09:19I can see basically all the things that it has saved about me, and then I could come to Claude and just say, hey. I want you to remember this, and it will automatically populate that inside of here. Alright.
09:27So next up, we have Claude projects, and this is probably a top two or three feature inside of Claude CoWork that they've shipped over the past year. So far, we've already talked about the Cloud MD file as well as a memory MD file. And this can get pretty unorganized if you are not using projects.
09:43So let me break down exactly what a project is right now and how you can begin leveraging it. Alright. So this is a perfect visual of what is going down when it comes to projects.
09:52So we have Cowork, which is a normal interface that we're using inside of Claude, and then we can create separate projects for each area of our business or our life. I personally have a project for YouTube. I have one for clients.
10:05I have one for personal and all of these other different use cases. So that way, I don't mix and match my different markdown files inside of each of these projects. On top of this, it's just a great way to stay visually organized.
10:18So let me show you exactly what I mean inside of Claude. Before projects, we would just have all of these different tasks right here scattered inside of Cowork, and this was, I'm telling you, a absolute pain. It was just a headache.
10:29Well, now we have this new section that is called projects. And as you can see right here, I have multiple different projects. I have one for advertisements.
10:36I have one for financials. I have one for my short form content, my school community, my influencer marketing agency, and my YouTube videos. So if I click on my YouTube videos, this is what it looks like inside of a project.
10:48We can just chat with coworker like normal right here. We could then see all of our outputs right here. So if we generate any HTML dashboard, specific files, documents, all that stuff, that will be stored right here.
11:00As well as we could see all of our scheduled tasks, which I'm gonna talk about later in this video and show you how you could begin using these. And then we could see all of our context inside of our YouTube videos folder here. And one of the best parts about using projects is this has separate memory aside from my entire ClaudeCowork ecosystem.
11:18So anything YouTube video related, it will remember. It will remember my previous chat from yesterday or even two weeks ago, and will always remember basically what it is I'm working on when it's YouTube video specific. Another important thing here is that each project gets its own ClaudeMD file.
11:33So if I pull this up, you can see that this one is specific to everything YouTube video related. One really big thing here is that if you're using Claude Cowork for every single thing you do for your business, your personal life, maybe your professional job, and you're using the same ClaudeMD file, this eats up your token cost because you will have a very bloated clotMD, and this gets loaded every single conversation.
11:54So it's really important to create specific MD files for different areas of your work life or your business. So now that you know what a project is and why it matters, I'm gonna show you how to create one right now. We're gonna see projects on the left hand sidebar over here as well as we could pin them as well.
12:10So we have the school community project as well as the YouTube's video project pinned right here since I use them often, but we could just come over to projects. And from here, we just click on new project, and there's a couple of different ways that we can create one. We can create one from scratch, which I highly suggest if you're just getting started.
12:27You can import from a project, or you can use an existing folder that you already have inside of Cowork. So I'm just gonna click on start from scratch. Let's just call this marketing.
12:36You can add your specific instruction here. However, I'm gonna skip this for now. We could add any of the files we wish to add to provide context, and we wanna make sure that memory is on so it could remember everything we talk about.
12:47Then we just click create, and we will now have our marketing project directly inside of here. And then just like my YouTube's video project, you could see our instructions, our scheduled tasks, and our specific context in memory for this project. There are two different ways we can access our projects.
13:02We can just come over to the left hand sidebar and click on it just like I showed you before. Or where we see our file selector in this, you know, interface inside of Cowork, we can select this and then scroll all the way down, and we can actually select any of the projects we wanna work inside of. So let's say we want to video prep for a YouTube video.
13:20I just select YouTube videos, click allow, and then now it will automatically save this to my YouTube's video project. Now moving on to phase number two inside of Clot Cowork. We've built the foundation with the ClotMD file, the memory, the projects, and all of those different things, which are basically just a scaffolding for this next stage, which is the building blocks.
13:39And this is how we actually get things done inside of CoWork. So these are more practical things you can do right now once you have the infrastructure set up in order to do some pretty amazing things for you. So the first thing we're gonna talk about, and this is a crucial one and one thing that really sets Claude apart from other AI tools, and that is skills.
13:58If you don't know what a skill is, let me break it down so simply that anybody can understand it. These are essentially just reusable workflows inside of Claude.
14:07So to give you a visual of this, you can have skills for different tasks, whether that is a receipt scanner skill, an invoice generator skill, a meeting prep skill, or even a slide generator like you're seeing in this video. For me, I could spin up this slideshow in literally one prompt. And when I say one prompt, I mean, like, less than a full sentence.
14:26And that is because I created a skill that perfects this workflow, and it will automatically trigger this when I give it a keyword. So gone are the days that you need to write out a very comprehensive prompt into Claude in order to get a good response because skills make it very simple for you to do this without having to give it a very detailed prompt.
14:44So to show you exactly what I mean, I'm gonna show you one of my favorite skills. So I'm just gonna type in PDF guide, and you can see right here that there's this description breaking down a specific task, which is generating a PDF guide for me. I'm gonna click on this, and then let's give it context on what it should actually make this guide about.
15:00Create a guide on how to use Claude CoWork efficiently. And now if I click on this skill, we could see this markdown file, which is a specific set of instructions teaching Claude exactly what to do. So specifically for this PDF guide, it shows exactly what the output should look like.
15:15It gives the exact colors to use. It gives the exact interior pages, numbered steps and rows, all of these different things. It's very clear set of instructions.
15:23So that way, whenever I trigger this, it's gonna look and feel the exact same every single time. And just like that, two minutes later, we now have this beautiful looking PDF guide breaking down exactly how to use Claude COWORK efficiently. So not only did it generate this, but it did research in a specific way in order to compile this PDF guide that I can use for basically a multitude of different things.
15:44It even breaks down the sixty second setup, breaks down exactly how to use memory in all of these different things. Before, in order for me to generate this, I would have had to give a very specific, a hyper specific prompt in order to get an output like this. But now whenever I want a guide created like this, all I have to do is type in PDF guide, and it triggers those exact same instructions.
16:03So in order for you to both see and create these specific skills, you can do that in the left hand sidebar where it says customize. So if I click on this, we're now gonna see a couple of things. Let's make sure to select skills on the top left hand side.
16:15And I personally have, like, over 50 skills in here that I've built after refining specific workflows. So I have a YouTube to x repurposer. I have a Gumroad resource skill.
16:25I have a classroom resource, IG carousel skill. All these different things I've crafted. And the best part is if you want access to all 50 of these skills that you can see right here that I use every single day in my business, then make sure to join my school community.
16:38There is a link in the description. Breaks down exactly every single skill and how to use them, as well as I even have this PDF guide breaking them down as well as different use cases for you to begin using these right now. Now if you wanna create your own skills, all you have to do is come over to this plus button and click on create skills, and we could either write these specific skill instructions, upload a skill, or create it with Claude.
16:59So from here, we would just give a very specific prompt on exactly what we want Claude to do in order to turn it into a skill. And another way to do this is let's say you did something specifically inside of Claude that you really like. You got the perfect output, and you wanna turn that into a skill.
17:12All you have to do is tell Claude, hey. Can you turn this into a skill that I could reuse? And then give it a specific name, and it will turn that into a reusable workflow that you can instantly trigger automatically.
17:22Alright. So next up, and this is building upon the skills that I just showed you, and though and these are slash commands. If you don't know what a slash command is, this is basically a way to fire and trigger a skill instantly.
17:33So instead of us having to describe what we wanted to do, we could just say slash research, and it will then trigger that skill in order to perform that task. Same thing for slides.
17:43I have a skill that generates slideshows exactly like this, and all I have to do is say forward slash slides, give it a brief context on what I want it to generate, and it will do it for me. As well as I have another one called inbox sweep where whenever I literally type just these two words, it will go through my entire email, draft the replies, and then even create a dashboard for me where I could see everything I need to reply to.
18:03In order to use your slash commands, all you have to do is come Claude, click forward slash, and then all of our different skills are gonna be accessible here, and I have so many. So for example, if I wanna run my teleprompter skill, all I have to do is type this, and this will automatically trigger that skill. This is a very simple concept, but really, really powerful when you use it properly, and it's gonna save you so much time if you've never used this before.
18:25Next up, we have plugins, and this is simply just a bundle of different skills that you can download and run together. So in order to access plugins, you would come over to customize where you find your skills, and then we have these plugins here that I personally have downloaded.
18:41And we could click on add plugin. We could either create one, or we can browse the plugin marketplace. The cool part about this is Anthropic has prebuilt plug ins directly inside of Cloud that we can download.
18:52So we have ones for design. We have ones for Slack, legal, productivity, even marketing.
18:57And in order to show you exactly what I mean, let me click on this legal one, And there are 13 different skills connected to this plugin. In order to install this, all we have to do is click on install, and then we now have access to all these different skills in this plugin.
19:12Let's say that you create a bunch of skills for your team or somebody on your team or your manager creates a bunch of different specific skills for your workflow. You can download those and begin running them instantly without you having to recreate them. Now inside of this legal plugin, we have all these different skills.
19:26We could go and customize these to our liking, but that is a TLDR of what plugins are. They're just basically bundles of skills that are pretty powerful if you use them properly. It can be really powerful when you share them across your team.
19:37Alright. So we went through the first two phases. First, we had our foundation, and then we had our building blocks.
19:42And now we move on to the ability to reach into our real life and have Cloud Cowork performing different tasks for us across these different applications. And this is where our AI operating system really starts to come together, and I'm gonna dive into this deeper now. So if you're not using connectors, I highly, highly suggest that you start doing this.
20:02If you don't know what a connector is, this is basically just a way to connect Cloud Cowork to any of the different applications you use, like Gmail, Slack, Google Calendar, Notion, Google Drive, or practically any of the different apps that you use on a day to day basis. So not only can you pull information from there so it could read your emails, but it can even reply to your emails or add things to your Google Calendar, add things to a Notion database, do all these different things, and that's all done with connectors.
20:29Alright. Before I show you how to add different connectors, let me show you it in action. I basically came here and just said pull up my last email.
20:35And as we can see right here, Claude is working, and it's actually searching through my email inbox. If we did not give it access to Gmail, it would not be able to do this. There would be no way for it to pull information from Gmail as well as be able to respond to emails that I have.
20:50So right here, there is this inquiry about potential sponsorship, it looks like. And I got this email just a couple of hours ago. I remember when this came into my email inbox, actually.
20:59And there are tons of different use cases that we could use with connectors. This is a very simple one that anybody can use right now. Connect your email.
21:06You could have it summarize your emails. And here is another example. I have this connected to Bitly, which is a platform that allows me to see how many people are clicking on every single link in the description in my YouTube videos so I could see which videos are driving the most traffic to my school community.
21:21And right here is a live artifact. I'm gonna touch on this later in this video on how you could build something like this directly in Claude. But this is pulling real live information from Bitly.
21:30So instead of me needing to use Bitly like this and go through and having to manually look at these links and even create these links, I could create them directly inside of Claude as well as see all this data right here. And that's all thanks to connectors. Now in order to add an app to your connectors list, you're gonna come over to co work.
21:47And on the left hand sidebar, we're gonna see this little customize button. Come here and click on that. And then from here, we're gonna have two options.
21:54We have skills and connectors. Make sure to click on skills. And then I have a couple of different ones configured here.
21:59I have Bitly. I have Latato, Canva, Firecrawl, GitHub integration, Gmail, a bunch of other different connectors right here. And in order to add another one, you click on this plus, click on browse connectors, and there's gonna be a ton of different ones that Claude lets you connect with.
22:13And then it's as simple as literally just clicking plus. It'll take you to that platform. You just have to authorize it, and then it's good to go.
22:19Now let's say that you have a specific application that you wanna connect to, and it's not in this list right here. Well, I'm gonna show you a hack that will allow you to connect to 9,000 plus different apps, including ones that you don't see in this list right here. And we're gonna be able to do this thanks to this Zapier connector.
22:35So let me show you exactly how we could begin setting this up right now. So first of all, we're gonna come over to zapier.com/mcp. I'll add a link in the description to make it easier for you.
22:45And then once we are signed up here, we will then see this interface. We want to click on new MCP server. This is basically just a combination of different applications, allows us to connect to Cowork.
22:55And then for our client, we wanna select Cloud Cowork, and we could go through and add any of these different applications that we want. So if we wanna connect to Airtable, we could do so. If we wanna use Slack, Salesforce, any of these applications, all we have to do is click on it, click on select all tools, which is are basically just different actions that can perform, then click on connect, and then we'll see it populated right here.
23:15And in order to add this to our Claude, we're just gonna click on connect and then add to Claude. Click on connect inside of this inside of this connector here. Click allow.
23:24And then just like that, it's gonna be added to Cowork, and we can now access any of the different application that we, you know, connected to. And then if I come back to my connectors, we see Zapier right here, and this should be functioning properly. I do want to mention that you don't need to use this.
23:37You do have to pay for any of these executions, but this is just a good alternative if there's an app that you wanna connect to that's not in this native list inside of Claude. Alright. So our next superpower is being able to use the Claude in Chrome extension that can basically go and do things inside of your browser.
23:54It could do things like fill out forms. It can click through different things, try out your different applications, all of those different things. So if there is not something like a connector available inside of Claude, it could then go and do things for you on the web.
24:06Alright. So for example, I'm gonna come back to Cowork and say, up my school community in my browser browser and tell me the last post that was made inside of there. Because there is no connector feature directly inside of Claude, and Zapier doesn't allow me to pull information from this app.
24:20So it will go around that bottleneck and basically pull it up in my browser and then physically look through my school community to get this data. Next, if I pull up my browser, up here, you could see this little icon that is in blue, and that means that it is literally searching on my browser.
24:36So there's also this little orange bar that is around my screen. It pulled up my school community without me actually doing it myself. It just pulled up this post, and then it will come back to me and report inside of Claude and tell me the last post.
24:49And just like that, like, thirty seconds later, we get a response from Claude saying that the last post was about the Anthropic partnering with SpaceX that doubles usage limits. So that is working properly. And let me show you exactly how you could begin using this right now and download it.
25:03Alright. So the first thing you need to do is look up Claude in Chrome. We're gonna come over to this right here.
25:09Alright. So you're gonna download it right here. I will add a link in the description to do this, or you could come here and just type in claude.com/claudeforchrome, and then just click add to Chrome.
25:18It will download this as an extension, and then we will see it up in the top right of our browser as I have here. When I pull it up, we could then ask it directly in our browser to go and do something.
25:28Or if we're inside of CoWork, it will automatically be able to access it We just need to make sure to come back into Cowork, click on customize, and then from here, go down to connectors, and we need to make sure that we see the Claude in Chrome connected. And in order to do this, we would come over to extensions, click on general, and we wanna make sure that we have browser use enabled.
25:49Alright. So next up, we have one level above that, and that is computer use. So not only can Claude use your browser, but this can use your entire computer, your desktop.
25:59It can pull different folders from your desktop, all of these different things you could do using computer use. So let me show you a quick example and then how you could begin using this one as well. Alright.
26:07So I just gave the prompt. Can you pull the last videos that I have in my videos folder that is on my desktop? So to show you exactly what I mean, I have this videos folder right here, if you could see.
26:18If I pull it up, you could see all of these videos inside of this folder. So what it's gonna do is it's now gonna access my entire computer, and it will find those videos. So it's gonna ask if it can, you know, perform these actions.
26:29So let me just click on allow. And then what it should do is actually, like, take over. I'm not gonna touch my screen here, and it should begin playing around on my desktop in five bit.
26:37So just like that, it went ahead, found these videos, and even broke them down right here. So without the computer use feature, this would not be possible. So we need to make sure to connect that in an order to do so.
26:46So in order to do so, we're gonna come back over to customize. We're gonna click on connectors. And then from here, we're gonna come back to our settings.
26:54And then inside of general, we will see it directly below browser use that we just enabled before this. So make sure just to enable this, and then it should be able to go off and perform these tasks for you. Alright, guys.
27:04So we're on to phase number four, and this is where we give Claude real superpowers. This is where Claude can begin to work without you needing to be there in order for it to do these things. The first thing that I'm gonna show you in this new phase is live artifacts, and you got a glimpse of this earlier on in this video.
27:21So these are dashboards that we could build one time, and we could use them forever. So, basically, it automatically pulls information from the different apps that you connected that I showed you earlier on in this video. And every time we open it, it has live information pulled directly.
27:34And I'm telling you, this has been one of the most game changing features when it comes to Claude, and they just released this about a week and a half ago. And I have absolutely been loving it. Alright.
27:43So here is a live artifact, and I already showed you this one earlier on in the video when I was demoing out the connectors. But this one, it's pulling real information in real time, so I don't need to go and refresh this or run a specific scheduled task in order for it to generate this on autopilot. Another example is I have a Stripe revenue dashboard that automatically pulls my Stripe information.
28:03So whenever I get a new payment, it will automatically populate this dashboard. So I don't need to go ahead and, you know, refresh it or go in and look at Stripe for that matter. I could see this graph here.
28:13When I prompted this in one simple prompt, it's super easy for you guys to begin using. And then another example and probably my favorite is my morning command center that I think a ton of you guys can go ahead and build out yourself. So, basically, every single morning, it gives me a TLDR of what matters this morning based on my email inbox, so it pulls information from there.
28:31It pulls my Google Calendar. So it actually shows me that I have a flight to San Francisco, um, in Ben tomorrow pulling my Google Calendar, and then it even breaks down my top priorities of emails that I need to reply to and breaks down my inbox on summary, ongoing conversations, and everything else. So this is a live artifact.
28:50So let me show you now how you can begin building them, and they're super easy. And, man, I have been loving live artifacts. They're like mini applications you could have directly in Claude that pulls all the information from your different applications.
29:02It's pretty wild when you think about it. So in order to begin building one, we're gonna come over to the left hand sidebar, and we'll see live artifacts right here.
29:10We're gonna click on this. And from here, here are all of my different live artifacts. We have my latest emails, my brand deal operating system, daily command center.
29:18We have my Stripe revenue dashboard. We have my Bitly dashboard, all Skills Explorer. And in order to create one of these, we just come here and click on new artifact.
29:26We click on create with Claude, and it will then pull us here. And we could just explain exactly what it is in plain English that we wanna build. Anytime that we pull information from somewhere, for example, or do a specific task, we could just say, hey.
29:38Can you turn this into a live artifact for me? And it will do it automatically. Then once we have it generated, they will live in a couple of different places.
29:46So they will be populated in this pinned section of the sidebar. For example, all of these are artifacts. If they have this weird little logo, that means that it's an artifact.
29:56So we can then pull this up whenever we want in real time. So I can just click on this, pull up my Stripe revenue dashboard. I can pull up my Bitly dashboard.
30:03Dashboard all right here so we don't need to go through our previous conversations in order to find it, and it's very easy to see them. As well as if I come over to live artifacts, we could then see them right here as well.
30:14Alright. So our next superpower is giving Claude the ability to go and perform different tasks for us when we're not even using our computer, and we're able to do that with something called scheduled tasks.
30:26So these are basically automations we could set up that run our skills and our workflows across the different apps that we connected inside of Clot. So this is one of those features that is kind of full circle and combines everything that we've talked about so far in this video and can be extremely powerful if we leverage them correctly.
30:43So these right here are different scheduled tasks that are running every single day for my business that are running inside of Claude. I don't need to trigger them manually. They just automatically run at a given time.
30:55So for example, I have this daily wrap wrap up schedule task. And if I open this, this is what my daily wrap up consists of. An end of day wrap up, which audits today's co work activities, checks different tasks for cross thread tasks, generate a Apple Swiss HTML report, and it even sends a summary to me via my Slack DM.
31:13So if I open this up, I could see everything that went down inside of Claude Cowork. So this ran automatically at, I think, 6PM. It created this wrap up document for me, breaking down every single thing that Cowork did, what I did.
31:27I did do things, but I did not actually give Claude a dump of everything that I accomplished throughout the day. But if I were to do that, then it would populate here. And then it basically shows everything that was carried forward, shows tomorrow's number one priority, and then even has a self reflection here.
31:40So not only did it generate this for me and populate it directly in Claude, but it also sent me a Slack DM with this information, and this runs every single day. So in order for you to begin building out scheduled tasks, it's really simple. On the left hand sidebar that we're so familiar with by the end of this video, we click on scheduled.
31:59We come here. We could click on new task. We can give it a name, a description, and we could basically explain in plain English what we wanted to perform.
32:07We could choose which project we wanted to work inside of, what specific model. I use Opus 4.7 because it's the best model, and then we could choose a frequency. We could do hourly.
32:15We can do daily. We can do weekdays. We could do weekly.
32:19All these different things we can basically customize so that way it runs on whatever frequency we want it to. And another way to create a scheduled task is we don't need to necessarily come to this, you know, section inside of co work. We could just come here to new task and explain it right here.
32:33Or if we had it run a specific skill and we're like, hey. This is great. I wanna run this every day at 8AM.
32:39We can just simply tell Claude to do it, it will create that scheduled task, and it will then live right here. Alright. And on to phase five, and this is a very, very simple one that I'm gonna leave you guys with.
32:49You can make all of these yours. So Claude gets really powerful not only when you just, like, take other people's skills and different plug ins and different workflows, live artifacts, schedule tasks, etcetera.
33:00But when you begin building your own, you will start to see how powerful Claude CoWork really is. I highly suggest just literally give it a brain dump and be like, hey. This is what I do on a day to day basis.
33:11Help me find things that you could automate for me and and start creating skills from there. You'll be really surprised at all the things that you could have Claude automate for you when you just chat with it. Thank you guys for staying to the end of this video.
33:22If you want my full Claude Cowork course and you wanna be in a community of different entrepreneurs and professionals using Claude and Cowork in their business and everyday life, make sure to join my school community. Absolutely no pressure. If you want free content, I'm still gonna be covering free content about this on my YouTube channel, so make sure to subscribe.
33:40And with that being said, guys, thank you so much for staying to the end, and I will see you guys in the next video, and cheers. Free audio post production by alphonic.com.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Thirteen superpowers. Most users are running on three. Brock Mesarich has been operating a solo business on Claude Cowork every day for three months, and this is the full system map he wishes had existed when he started.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:34model
The 5-Phase Cowork System
- Foundation
- Building Blocks
- Reach Into Real Life
- Real Superpowers
- Make It Yours
A progression model from zero to automated solo-business OS.
Steal forAny JoeFlow or Mod Boss onboarding video
00:00list
13 Superpowers
- Folder workspace
- CLAUDE.md
- memory.md
- Projects
- Skills
- Slash commands
- Plugins
- Connectors
- Claude in Chrome
- Computer use
- Live artifacts
- Scheduled tasks
- Build your own
Complete numbered taxonomy of Cowork capabilities, ordered foundational to autonomous.
Steal forTitle/hook formula for any N-ways-to-use-[tool] video
09:27concept
One Cowork, Many Brains
Projects give each work area a separate CLAUDE.md and memory, preventing context bleed and token waste.
Steal forJoeFlow pitch for separate dictation contexts per project
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
32:45product
“If you want my full Claude Cowork course and you want to be in a community of different entrepreneurs and professionals using Claude and Cowork in their business and everyday life, make sure to join my school community.”
Soft sell woven throughout 4 instances. Framed as community access, not course purchase. Free content fallback to reduce friction.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
