Claude Cowork is an agentic mode inside the Claude Desktop app. You describe an outcome, step away, and come back to finished work — drafts, summaries, organised files — written directly to a folder on your computer. This guide walks you through your first Cowork project, set up as a personal assistant and knowledge partner. It is written for Trelleborg colleagues who do not consider themselves technical.
Cowork sits next to the regular Chat tab inside the Claude Desktop app. The difference is the working style: in Chat, you direct Claude step by step; in Cowork, you describe an outcome, Cowork plans the subtasks, and it executes them while you do something else. The work lands as real files in a folder you connect — not buried in a chat thread.
Memory is automatic and scoped to each project. The shape of your workspace — what Claude reads at the start of every session — is set by a small folder you create once. The rest of this guide is about getting that folder right.
Anthropic's product line uses similar words for very different things. Read this once and the rest of the guide will make sense.
| If you mean… | It actually is… | How it differs from Cowork |
|---|---|---|
| claude.ai Projects | Cloud-based conversation folders on the claude.ai website | Cloud-synced, chat-based, no agentic execution, no local file access |
| Claude Code | Developer command-line tool for agentic coding | Lives in a terminal, code-first, no desktop GUI, no scheduled tasks |
| Teams (the plan) | A pricing tier | A billing level, not a feature. Cowork runs on the Team plan, among others |
| Workspaces (Console) | API-level organisation units in the Anthropic developer console | For developers managing API keys and billing — unrelated to desktop Cowork |
| Skills | Packaged capabilities you can install into Claude | Skills extend what Cowork can do; they are components, not the workspace itself |
| Plugins | Bundles of skills and connectors for role-specific use | Similar to Skills packaging; adds capability to Cowork, not the container |
There is no official Anthropic personal-assistant Cowork tutorial yet. These three community videos cover the territory well. Start with Tina Huang if you have not seen Cowork before.
context/ folder: who you are, how you like to work,
what you are focused on this week. Total about half a page of
writing.
Cowork can read and modify everything in the folder you connect to it. That makes the choice of folder a security decision, not just a convenience. The Safety page covers a documented attack (PromptArmor, April 2026) where a malicious file dropped into a connected folder caused silent data leakage. Read it before you connect any folder that already contains personal or company files.