Claude Cowork: How to Set Up AI as Your Second Brain

Have you ever felt like you are explaining the same thing to AI over and over again?

You start a new chat, add the same client background, explain the same project, upload the same files, and then copy and paste the answer somewhere else.

Claude Cowork changes that.

In this episode, Maxine explains how Claude Cowork can help you move from simply chatting with AI to actually delegating repeatable work. Instead of only giving you a response, Claude can work inside a specific folder, read files, create outputs, edit documents and run scheduled tasks.

This episode covers the three foundations of getting started:

Projects — so Claude has the right context and instructions
File access — so Claude can work with selected folders on your computer
Scheduled tasks — so recurring work can happen without you starting from scratch

You’ll also hear practical examples for bookkeepers, corporate teams, entrepreneurs and anyone who works with repeat tasks, reports, research, client folders or weekly admin.

Most importantly, Maxine also talks about safety: only give Claude access to the folders it needs, avoid sensitive documents like IDs and banking information, and always review important work before sending it out.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

What Claude Cowork is
How it is different from a normal chatbot
Why projects save time and reduce repeated context
How folder access can reduce copying, pasting and re-uploading files
How scheduled tasks can support weekly or monthly admin
Real examples of Claude Cowork in business
Why you still need to review AI outputs before using them
How to start with one simple project this week

Try this after listening:
Download Claude Desktop from Anthropic, create one project, and set it up for one area of your work. Start small. Choose one client, one recurring task, or one folder you understand well.

Safety reminder:
Do not give AI access to folders containing sensitive personal information, banking details, IDs or private documents. Create a safe working folder first.

Claude Foundations — Level 1
Claude Power — Level 2

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Next. This is AI for South Africa.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Let's go.

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Hello and welcome to AI for South Africa. My name is Maxine and welcome to the show. Today we're chatting about Claude Cowork and how it actually works. So, you know that feeling when you keep explaining the same thing over and over? We touched base on this on the automation podcast as well, where you put the same information into a chat. And every time you want to talk about a client or a project, you you keep putting that background information, that context into the window. When I first started with Claude Project, obviously giving it that context, it was so amazing how it had changed the way that I do stuff and how efficient I had become. But then I found a tutorial a month or so ago, and it was like how to set up your cowork properly. And for the first time, I had set up a project that runs on its own. And when I came back to my desk, I was like, yes, there's some hits and misses. I mean, it wasn't 100% perfect, but it had done something that takes me an hour, hour and a half, like two minutes to do, and I didn't even touch anything. I went to go make a cup of coffee and I came back and it was done and I sent it. And when I realized that I could do this more and more with the tasks that have step-by-step instructions, cowork really became my second brain. And I then realized that there was so much that I could set up with cowork that's going to help me. It wasn't like a draft that I have to copy and paste somewhere. It was actual files finished in my folder, ready for me to email and send to the clients. I tweaked it here and there because I wasn't happy with how it was bringing up the data that I was working with. But for the most part, it was done and it was fantastic. So today, what I want to talk about is cowork, what it is, how it works, and the three things you can set up first if you're just getting started. And by the end of this, you should be thinking about wanting to go deeper from a business perspective or from a team perspective with cowork. Obviously, staying close to every step that happens with cowork. The most important thing is to make sure that you don't give it information that you don't want it access to. So IDs, bank details, things like that. Safety is always main priority. Okay, let's get started with the obvious question. What is cowork? Most of us know Claude as a chat tool like GPT or Gemini. You open it, you type something, it responds, and it's genuinely useful. But you're still doing the work, you're still doing the back and forth, like we discussed in the automation. You're asking, you're copying, you're pasting, you're doing everything with the response that it gives you. Now, cowork is a little bit different. It's the desktop app. You download it onto your Mac or your Windows machine, and it gives Claude access to certain folders on your computer. So it doesn't just automatically have access to your whole machine. You have to give it a specific folder to work in and give it permission to do that. Every time you create a project or a chat with cowork, it asks you for permission and where it must work. Okay. That one shift changes how everything functions because now you're not copy-pasting anymore. Because now Claude isn't just answering questions, it's reading your files, creating your files, editing your files, and running tasks by itself in that folder that you've given it permissions with. You don't need to keep going and checking the copy, pasting it anywhere, or going to chat to do something. It's there on your computer where you want it. It's the difference between asking someone for advice and actually delegating the work. Now let's talk about the three things that are worth understanding first. Number one is projects. So think of a project in co-work like a dedicated workspace for a specific area. Okay. It might be a folder for clients that you work with regularly, or your monthly reporting for your accounting, or it could be your social media content. Whatever makes sense for you, it's that folder. And each project has its own files and its own instruction and its own memory, which is fantastic. So when you go into the Claude project and give it a task, it already has so much context. It can read the files, it's got the instructions, it's got the memory, it knows who the client is, it knows what you're talking about, prefers your format, and knows how you talk already if you've put it into the instructions. It knows everything that's been done to that point. You don't have to start from scratch every single time, which is a huge saver. And again, like in the automation one, where I was like, we've got to save time. Yes, we use these things, but I mean this just takes it to another level. And there's a token angle for this as well. A little bit of background. The more people use AI, the less tokens there are for each person, which means you land up running out of tokens more and more and more. So you want to try and get your token usage a little down. And when you create these projects with instructions and context and memory, it's watched it once, it's used it once, okay? It's done its thing once, and it's there and it's got it stored in the project, and it doesn't have to go and re-understand it every single time you have a new chat session. So it's got the context built in. You set it up once and it works over and over and over. And you're just getting so much more value for your subscription. It also helps you from not having to upgrade the $200 subscription. Now, projects are available in the free version as well, so you do get these benefits, but obviously the amount of stuff or the amount of projects you'll be able to do and the amount of chats that you have will differ. Number two, this is file access. This is the one that surprises people the most, I think. Normally, if you have Claude to work with on a document, you upload it and that's fine. And then every time you upload something, it counts towards your token usage, by the way. Also, every time you continue a conversation with Claude, it reads every single document every single time. So the longer your conversations are and the more files you have in it, the more token usage is being used. With cowork, you've given Claude access to your folder on your computer. It's read the files from the get-go, it's done the memory, it's got the context, and you don't have to keep uploading it every time. So let's say you've got a folder of client feedback forms or monthly sales reports or notes from meetings, whatever it is. Claude can read those directly, work with them, pull information from them, and save the output back in the exact same folder. So everything happens in that environment. You don't have to move anything, you just chatter it like a normal chatbot. For South African businesses where every RAND of your subscription is needed, it matters. You're not duplicating efforts either. You're not using the token budget or resending information to Claude. It's just there, reading it off of your computer. Easy. The one thing to know though, when you grant Claude access to the folder, it must be intentional. You must know which folder to do it. If there's key information in there, like your IDs and personal information in there, don't give it control of that folder. Don't give it control of your whole computer. Create a new folder on your desktop or a subfolder within a bigger folder so that it can understand that this is the place to work, this is the safe place, and do a backup of the folder that you're gonna work in before you start. It's just good practice. Claude has gotten better at better at understanding the guardrails that you put up so it won't just go wandering off and doing its own thing in other folders. As long as you're very specific about the folder, you should be good. Number three is schedule tasks. This is the one that made me just watch what was happening on my desktop. It was like I was watching the matrix. Someone was just controlling my computer and I was watching everything happen. Cowork lets you schedule tasks that run automatically. So you set it up and you tell it when you want something done and what it must do, and it just runs without you being there. Obviously, your computer can't be in sleep or switched off, and you have to have the desktop app. But let's say, for example, every Friday at 4 p.m., you go to your reports folder and read this week's data, okay, and it writes a summary for you. On Friday at 4 p.m., it does exactly that. Let's say, for example, your computer's closed on Friday at 4 p.m. For some reason, you're not working that day. Then all that happens is the next time you open your computer, any schedule task that we're supposed to run, run. So it's not like it's not gonna do it, it does it. It just means that when you open your computer next, it'll do it for you. Let's say Monday morning you check notes on previous week's meetings in a specific folder. Monday morning, you have a schedule, boom, Claude does it for you. Claude can do real tasks that you do in your business manually right now. Cowork can take a version of anything off of your plates and just do them on a schedule in the background while you're busy doing your work that you need to do. This is the biggest thing for me because AI, I always said, helps you to 80% you do the 20, and then it gives you time back so that you can be strategic about what you need to do. Spending time figuring out where your business needs to go or spending time with your kids while Claude is doing stuff in the background for you. Now, full honesty, you're still gonna want to review everything important before it goes out. Don't just send it, okay? Cowork is a tool, it's not a replacement for your judgment. But the difference is reviewing a finished draft or starting from blank is such a huge time saver. So project gives Claude the context it needs, so you don't need to repeat yourself. The file access means you stop uploading and copying and pasting, and the schedule means it can happen while you're doing something else. That's the basics of co-work setup. And once those three things are working, genuinely it's it's a huge jump around how to use AI next. It's not a chat tool, it's an assistant that follows through. Also, if you're coming from an environment where you were using automations with Zapia, make or N8N, like previously discussed, Cowork can now do a lot of those things within the application, which saves you additional money and additional time making sure that all those things set up. Transferring that logic from one system to another is really, really easy. Let's talk about some real examples of using cowork. Let's say you run a small bookkeeping practice. You got a folder where your clients drop their receipts and statements each month. In co-work, you could set it up to going a project called client processing. You give Claude the instructions once, how you would like things categorized, what formats your summaries should follow, which clients is which, and you point it to a folder. Now, when the client drops a file in there, you can run a task, or you can schedule it once a month, it depends. That reads the file, pulls the key numbers, creates draft summaries in the format that you need, ready for you to check and send when it's time to send it. You're still doing the professional review, but Claude has done all the legwork and admin work of reading through everything and putting it into a structure. It's hours back every month. Let's say for a corporate professional, you're in a team that produces weekly status reports. Everybody has status reports. If you do them, you know you hate them. Currently, someone spends, say, an hour on a Monday pulling together all the updates from various documents, writing it up and then formatting it, right? With co-work, you create a project with a report template and instructions, and you schedule it for a Monday morning, and then it reads all the input files, notes, data, updates, everything, and puts it in a report in your format because you've told it what the format is. You come in, you review it, you make a couple of changes, and you send it. That goes from 45 minutes to an hour to 10 minutes. The person used to spend time formatting that can actually do something strategic. Let's say for an entrepreneur, right? You're running a business and you're just someone who uses AI to stay on top of things, maybe articles, notes, ideas in a folder, whatever it is. You set up co-work project pointed to a folder. Once a week, you schedule the task. I want you to read everything new in here this week and give me a summary of the key themes, anything you need to pay attention to. Monday morning, you open the folder and there's a note waiting for you with everything about that week that might be worth acting on. It's like a thinking partner who actually keeps track. So this last one is an example of how I run my research. I have to research all the time to stay up to date with AI. And before I used to read newsletters and articles and blogs and a whole bunch of stuff, and it used to take me forever. Now, Claude runs this project for me on a Monday morning. I open it up and I get all the information about what's happening in the AI world and what I can share with you guys. So here's what I want you to do for this week. I want you to go and download Claude Desktop if you don't already have it. Okay, you can go and search Claude Desktop download. It's usually the first result. Just make sure you're downloading from a company called Anthropic. You do need a paid Claude account for co-work, so pro or above. And I know not everyone out there is gonna upgrade and get that one, and that's completely fine. Then just work on the project section. But if you can, level up, try it for 30 days. And once you install it, don't do anything fancy. Just create one project, pick an area of your work, one client, a recurring task, a type of work, whatever it is. Set up the project for it, give it a name, write a couple of sentences of instructions that the work would involve and how you'd like it done, and see how it runs. That's all I want you to do for this week. Just set up one project. If you're on a free account, just set up the project and see if that works. If you're on the paid account, do it within cowork and let it access your folders and set a reminder up and do the projects. Just for this week. Just try it out and see what happens. Then the next week you can point it to a real folder when you get more comfortable and let it help you on something that you're currently working on. Remember that Claude needs context. And the more context you give it, the better it's gonna function. Please also always remember that it's important to make sure that you don't give it anything you don't want it access to. I refer to the park bench method. You're not gonna put your ID on a park bench and let someone take it. Same for your banking stuff, same for your personal documents. Just make sure it's in a different place. Give it a folder to work with, boundaries, and it'll do its thing. Cowork is one of those tools where the more intentionally you set it up, the more it actually gives you back. We've covered today the foundation of projects, file access, and scheduled tasks, but there's a whole nother layer of skills and connectors and advanced workflows and that we haven't even touched. If you want to go deeper, specifically for you, for your business or a team, I offer courses on foundational level and on pro level. You can find them on my website. I'll put the link in the notes and reach out. Take your Claude skills to the next level, take your AI skills to the next level. You will save time and money and effort using Claude Cowork. I can guarantee you that much. The next episode, we're gonna do something different. We're gonna talk about introducing AI to your kids. And I mean really introducing it, not just letting them use it by helping them understand it, how to work with it safely, and actually build something with it. Whether your kids are in primary school or high school, this one's for you. Remember to subscribe if you don't want to miss it. And if something from today's episode landed for you, share it with the person who needs to hear it. I'm Maxine, and this is AI for South Africa. Let's go.

SPEAKER_04 18:21

Nice still.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Screens glow over Josie.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

Over Cape Town. A disarming name.

SPEAKER_06 18:59

A different kind of cheese.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Let's go.

SPEAKER_05 20:10

Slow bruh.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

Nice still.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Screens glow over Josie.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Over Cape Town.

SPEAKER_07 20:42

New coat.

SPEAKER_06 20:53

A different kind of chicken.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

This is AR for South Africa.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Let's go.