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Lesson 1 of 9 · Getting started with Claude Cowork

From chatbot to coworker

From Mastering Claude Cowork: Learn Cowork's seven core capabilities by doing — local file access, persistent memory, connectors, skills, projects, the browser extension and its limits, and scheduled automation. Three modules, nine lessons.

Module 1 · Episode 1

From chatbot to coworker

“I've been making AI videos for about three years, and I've never felt this way about a single tool.” The three differences that change everything.
  • Level: Beginner
  • Source: Jeff Su walkthrough

Claude Chat vs. Claude Cowork — the 3 big differences

Tap each card to reveal
  • Local files, not cloud uploads
  • A much larger context window
  • Outcome-first, not task-first
  • It delivers files, not just text

Chat or Cowork?

Drag each trait into the right bucket, then press Check.
20 files / 30 MB upload limits
Reads your local files directly
Task-first, step-by-step prompts
Outcome-first prompts; delivers finished files

Try these prompts

The same goal, two prompting styles. The first is task-first (Chat gives you a recommendation to act on); the second is outcome-first (Cowork just does it):

›  Review my raw thumbnail photos and recommend a naming convention and folder structure I should use.

›  I have 15 raw thumbnail photos in this folder. I need them organized into subfolders by topic with descriptive filenames.

Quick check

Two questions to finish the episode.
Why can Cowork handle more and larger files than Chat?
How should you prompt Cowork?

Before the next episode

Take one task you'd normally do in Chat and rewrite it outcome-first: state the end result, the constraints, and the quality bar in one paragraph.

Topics: claude-cowork, anthropic, interactive, walkthrough