Claude Cowork Initial Thoughts + Two Surprising Use Cases

The Rundown In this guide you will learn how Claude Cowork will revolutionize your relationship with your computer (seriously). We cover how it’s different from regular Claude, what you can do with it, and demo a couple workflows. Who This Is Useful For AI users who want to level up without opening a code editor Claude Pro users thinking about the Max plan Anyone with a computer and a pulse (it’s really great) What You Need to Get Started A MacBook The Claude Desktop app A Claude Max Subscription ($100/month) Step 1 Make sure your Claude desktop app is updated and open it up. You should see the new Cowork tab. Step 2 You will see some suggested workflows. For our demo we are going to have Claude edit some images and videos. You can download the attached images and videos, or find your own. Make sure you put them in a folder. Step 3 Click the “Work in a folder” button and select the folder you created. Step 4 Give Claude this prompt:  ”Save copies of the images in this folder then reduce the file size of each by at least 50%.” You should see Claude editing the images using the terminal. Whatever task Claude Cowork is completing will show up in the top right. Step 5 Give Claude this prompt:  ”Make a copy of the horse video that is 2x speed.” Then before Claude finishes the task, add another prompt to the queue:  ”Extract the audio from the small steps video and save it as an mp3.” Claude should power through both tasks in parallel, like a champ. Going Further Click on Settings→Extensions→Browse Extensions. We recommend adding the Context7 extension to power up Claude Cowork’s brain by giving it access to open source documentation. There are more awesome extensions in here to let you fully automate your Mac with Claude Cowork. It’s a good idea to start out with ones that have “developed by Anthropic” in the extension.

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