Course contents
Set Up Cowork
Get Cowork running on your machine, give it a workspace folder, and verify it can actually work.
Cowork ships inside the Claude desktop app on macOS and Windows, on the web at claude.ai, and in beta on iPhone, iPad, and Android. It's included with Max, Team, and Enterprise plans. The desktop app is the best place to start: it can work with folders on your actual computer.
| Surface | Best for |
|---|---|
| Desktop app (macOS/Windows) | Real work with folders on your machine — start here |
| Web (claude.ai) | Quick cloud sessions from any computer |
| Mobile (beta) | Assigning tasks and steering running sessions on the go |
Install the Claude desktop app
Download from claude.ai/download for macOS or Windows and sign in with your Claude account (Max, Team, or Enterprise plan). Cowork appears as its own tab alongside Chat.
VerifyYou can see a Cowork (or "Work") tab in the app's sidebar.Create a workspace folder
Make a folder for your first project — something low-stakes, like ~/Documents/cowork-sandbox. Drop in a few files you don't mind experimenting on: a couple of PDFs, a spreadsheet, some notes.
VerifyThe folder exists and has 3–5 sample files in it.Start a session and grant folder access
Open Cowork, start a new session, and select your sandbox folder when asked. This is the permission model: Claude can only touch folders you explicitly hand it.
VerifyThe session header shows your folder name.Run a smoke test
Before any real work, confirm the plumbing. Ask for something tiny and observable.
promptList every file in this folder and write a one-line description of each into a new file called inventory.md.VerifyA new inventory.md appears in your folder with an accurate list. If it does, the loop works — Claude can read and write your files.