Everything You Know About Claude Cowork Is OUTDATED

0:00Pretty much everything you know about Claude Co-work is already outdated because Anthropic have changed everything. If you're someone who's never even touched Claude Co-work or you've used it a lot and now you're like, Ella, where has everything gone? How does this work? I can't seem to find anything. Then this video is for you. We're going to cover personal accounts and Teams accounts. I've run Claude across organizations with 50 plus people using a Teams account. So, trust me when I say I know every setting and every button and tracked every update. So, the first thing to notice is there's no real co-work tab anymore. We used to at the

0:35very start of things, we had a chat, co-work, and code toggle here. Then Claude moved it into the top right, and we used to have a chat, co-work, and code button up here. But now, we just have chat and co-work, and we have code. We then got another update, which is the one I've got on screen here, which actually put the toggle between chat and co-work in the middle of your screen here. So before you started to launch a task, you could say, "Hey, just talk it through with Claude. Let's just chat back and forward or actually let's select co-work mode and then we can give

1:06Claude a task to run autonomously end to end." It was like, "Okay, well, we just kind of decide here which one we're going to use." But that still presented a problem because people then were asking me like, Elliot, what do I choose, chat or co-work? When do I choose which? And Claude realized that problem. So, they've actually taken the problem out of our hands because now you might have noticed that the chat and co-work toggle has completely disappeared on your account. As if by magic, one day you show up and it's like, "Oh, co-work's not even there anymore. What the heck? How do I use it?" Well, the simple fact of the matter

1:37is Claude is taking this out of our hands. It's removing these toggles so we don't have to choose between chat and co-work anymore. Under the hood, it's going to decide. So it will look at what you're doing whether you're just having a conversation back and forward or if you're actually getting a task to run autonomously and need the full power of co-work invoke it on and off as it needs which means we don't have to work out which selection to make. We can just say, "Hey, I want to work in a particular folder." And we can get to work and Claude just takes care of everything under the hood, which I

2:06really love because one of the biggest questions and one of my fastest growing videos on this channel was like, "Chat versus co-work. What is the difference?" Well, now we don't have to worry about that. But there is a big butt because on a Teams account, it's not so simple. If you're just on a Pro or Max account,

2:21that setting will set up automatically. But if you run Claude Teams in your business, there is an extra step you need to go through. If you go into your organization settings like I am here and go to capabilities, you're going to see this chat chat and co-work unified. Let members use the new unified chat and co-work experience. That's what we're calling it, the unified chat and co-work experience where Claude can run code, work with files, and keep longer tasks going in the cloud. When off, everyone keeps classic chat and co-work. Now, they do have a little setup guide and security guide here, but honestly, you as an admin of a team's account have the

2:58decision to make here. So, I've turned it off. Chat and co-work unified. You can see back in my app here, the toggle system has come back. If I go back into my organization settings on my team's account here, you go to capabilities and turn it on. You'll see that the chat and co-work toggle is gone. We just work. We

3:17don't have to make any more decisions. So, that's number one. Chat and co-work are merging. They should happen automatically on a Pro or Max account, so you don't have to make that decision. If you're on a Teams account, you need to check those settings in your organization. I recommend turning the merger on. Now, the second tip I have is if you actually watched my original Claude Co-work video here, which I know a lot of you will have done, I recommend downloading the desktop app to begin with because Coowwork only worked on the desktop app because it had to use files and folders on your computer and needed

3:49simply the power of your computer to execute. But that's simply not true anymore. You can actually use Claude Co-work here on your web browser. I'm actually on the web browser version of the app. And it's a little bit hard to show because obviously we don't have the co-work selection toggle, but it will run on the cloud in your web browser without you having to use local files on your computer. You'll see here if I go into my settings and I go to co-work, we have co-work in the cloud here and it allows co-work tasks to use Anthropics cloud instead of their own computers. So tasks keep running across desktop, web,

4:26and mobile. So you can even access this on mobile as well. And this also moves the chat and co-work switch closer to the input box, which was the one I was talking about being unified a minute ago. Basically, we can just keep working on our web app or phone the same power that we have on our computer. So if I invoke a skill for example on my web browser version here rather than my desktop, this is my company DNA builder skill which helps walk you through how to build the core 10 files that every clawed account should really have or any AI platform should have in your

5:01business. If we go and start running a task here, it's getting set up for this session. You can see it's actually doing multiple steps here. It's using code to actually do stuff and it's just firing this endto-end task back and forward rather than me going asking it a question and it just giving me an

5:19answer. It's using multiple connectors. It's using web search. It's using memory. It's running skills to work through this task for me which previously would have been a bit of a challenge with just the chat mode on. It would have been very stop start. Now, what's interesting about this as well is you can see in the top of my screen here that it's actually I'm on the web browser, but it's saying, "Hey, MacBook Pro is connected. Claude can use the files and apps on my computer." So, both from my phone app now and from the web app, I can actually get Claude to use files and apps on my computer. I just

5:50need to make sure that the computer that has my desktop app on is up and running. then I could log into Claude on a different web browser on a different computer remotely and it could still actually access the files and information on my computer. Now obviously if that original computer was off and Claude wasn't loaded on there then it wouldn't be able to access the files and folders on that computer. It would still be able to run co-work mode, which is remember essentially clawed code under the hood, but with a nice user interface to actually execute a lot of these end to-end tasks, but it would

6:23just do everything in the cloud rather than using any of the context, files, information on my computer. So, we're getting this really fluid environment where we can switch between all our devices and almost as long as our original device is on, we have full access or we still have the full power. We just have to upload any extra information to the clawed servers, the anthropic servers to get that extra context in our work. Now, once you've understood those two key points, we can dive in a little bit deeper to how projects and folders on your computer work. Cuz originally, we just selected a folder on our computer and started

6:55working on it. Because remember, co-work can use files and folders on our computer. So, we could actually just go in here and click add folder. For example, I could go into my screenshots and just select my screenshots folder here and just tell Cord, hey, can you go into my screenshots folder, look at the loose screenshots, give them a name that makes them easy to distinguish and read without opening the whole screenshot and then file them nicely for me. And Claude could actually, you can see, allow access to this folder. I'm allowing Claude to go into my screenshots folder and just start like working in there, renaming, looking at what's going on,

7:28editing and creating files. And that was super useful, but it left a bit of a loose end. So then what happened is anthropic decided hey let's put everything in projects. Originally we had two separate types of projects. We had claude co-work projects and we had claude chat projects. Claude then merged them all into one area and have since merged them again. So all of our projects are just projects. There's no

7:50distinction between chat co-workers. Now it's just changed this week actually. If I open up my AIO OS, my AI operating system here, you can see I get all of my chats here that are nicely filed underneath. So, I can see what tasks I've been running. But we also get a couple of different areas on our computer. We get folder. This is the folder that's connected, as I said, on this computer. You can see here. So, if I click this little edit button here, I could actually select a different folder on my computer for Claude to start working in with co-work mode. But we also have context here. So we could

8:24click plus here and click upload from device. If I click upload from device, we could actually upload files into the project which will sit on the clawed servers which would allow it to work whether my computer was on or off which is a handy bonus as well. So they're slowly actually pooling all of this and bring it into one unified experience and you can only expect that to get more and more merged as well. So what you could end up with now is a project that has context that's uploaded to the anthropic servers and you could also attach a folder on your computer depending on how

9:00you want it to work. So we're really getting some flexibility, but with that comes a little bit of complication and just understanding the different options that are available there for you. Perhaps one of the biggest announcements with Claude Co-work was the ability to run scheduled tasks. If I go into my sidebar here, you'll see on the left hand side we have this button that says scheduled. We can basically take any claude skill, any action we want it to take and set it on a schedule. You can see that I've got a few running here, but it also offers you some options like daily briefing, triage your inbox,

9:33weekly reviews that you can just run every morning. And that was a massive upgrade because it meant it kind of killed flows like N8N and people having to do techy stuff with claw code. You just go and say, "Hey, I want to set up a scheduled task in claude and let it run." massive upgrade that didn't exist originally. But now we can also go one level deeper and I can attach scheduled tasks to a clawed project. So I've got

9:57my Halfday Thursdays HQ project here. Uploaded to it is 10 key files, my company DNA files that I teach inside halfday Thursdays as the full context. So I can ask at any point and work in this project with co-work. I can get it to work on any task with full context in my business. But we can also schedule tasks in here now. So I can do live Q&A prep. This is one of my demo projects. I actually have like 10 or 20 probably running in my main version of this. But you can set up scheduled tasks that are attached to particular projects which is really helpful because one, we can use

10:31the context of a project in here. Two, of course, we can use all of our Claude skills. There's memory attached to the project and we can set actions to run on time or a trigger. So every Wednesday, you can see this one runs every Wednesday at 1:49 p.m. This action actually runs to prep for our live Q&A calls. So what we're getting now is this more merged experience. Instead of having loads of separate co-work areas, chat areas, coded areas, now we can almost just build projects, AI operating systems that have all the context we

11:02need. They have the scheduled tasks. They have the power to run co-work under the hood. and we don't have to make so many decisions about like what are we doing, where are we working, we can just get in and work or even schedule tasks to do the work for us. The most slept on clawed co-work update that people didn't realize was a problem or even existed is actually to do with memory. Now, previously you didn't have any system memory over clawed co-work. You had it for clawed chat, but your co-work feature just was kind of dry. If you asked it what it knew about you, it

11:33didn't know anything because it just ran on files on your computer. It wasn't really attached to the main ecosystem. That has since changed a couple months ago. Your memory now runs across all of your account. So any conversation you have in this area of Claude, whether it's running co-work under the hood or just having a little chat back and forth has full context of your memory. So one thing I recommend doing is going into your settings and making sure you turn on the search reference and chats and generate memory from chats as well. It's up to you if you want to include sensitive topics. And then what you get

12:04down below is a full breakdown of pretty much everything. You can see it gives you a use section. It gives it topics, areas that I talk about a lot, different people that I work with, and even different projects. I have memory across all of my projects here as well that I've ever set up. And I'm able to reference these anywhere I'm working in Claude now. Any chat bar, any project, any reference. I can actually get claw to go and reference any of these memories or it just kind of knows what's going on as well which is really helpful. So we've got around this problem of co-work just kind of being a

12:37blank option to actually having full system memory as well. More merged features have been going into the web browsing ability as well. Now some of you might use claudin chrome. If I go to my computer here and I go into my web browser, my Google Chrome or I use Brave browser and I click open Claude, we get this sidebar popup and then we can use Claude in Chrome. So I can go and say BBC.com and it will navigate to BBC.com or I can prompt it to go and take actions and aentically browse around the web. You should see my screen start glowing orange and that means Claude is

13:16using my web browser for me. Now you can see using claudin chrome it's actually using my web browser and navigating for me as well. I could say sure what are the top headlines and it's going to go and summarize this page. But one of the big powers of Claude Co-work was also can you go to bbc.com it will actually drive Claudin Chrome from your desktop

13:38app here which was again super helpful. If you were mid task or it was running task it could open up Claude and Chrome. If I go to my web browser here, you can see Claude has opened the web browser and is actually starting to use my web browser for me, but driven from the desktop app. Super helpful. Really helpful. But there's been an upgrade to that as well because in your Claude app here, if you go to the top right,

13:58there's a hidden setting. It's browser. There is a browser built into your Claude app. So, we are having full operating systems here that we never have to leave. And now often instead of using Claude and Chrome, Claude will actually launch your browser. You can import all your cookies and etc there. But I can be working here and then I can also be browsing on the right hand side and I can use my web browser inside Claude and Claude can also use it. So I could say can you actually not use Claude in Chrome? Can you use the in inbuilt browser here please? Switching to the built-in browser. You can see on

14:30my app here it's working out how to use it and it's going to go and start driving that for me. And it says allow Claude to use browser on BBC.com. Yep, I'm going to allow that. And you can see it did just reload there. But I could say, can you summarize the top articles from bbc.com in your browser in pain here then please? This is super helpful particularly if you're building stuff or creating web pages etc. It can actually check and click around for you itself as well as browse the internet for you there. Sometimes that connection between Claude and Chrome and the Claude desktop app can be a little bit funky. This is

15:04actually way more stable than the original version. Plus, you can just cruise along and never have to leave the app anymore, which is pretty nice. The final update that I want to share with you today as well is Claude Docs, Claude Sheets, Claude Slides, which allow you to work right within the Claude app rather than have to attach a Word document or something like that. So, I've actually got this chat that I had running helping me plan and build some stuff for these YouTube videos I'm shooting today. I usually actually put the documents into Notion, but I want to

15:33show you how we can put it into Claude. Can you get my Claude cowork is outdated video outline and put it into a Claude doc for me please? And when you ask for a Claude doc rather than a word document or a Google doc, Claude will do it all in the app. So here we go. On the right

15:49hand side it's generating the document. You can see the left hand side it's got this little Claude Docs tag and it's actually writing my outline for me live here. I can see how it's building. It's giving me some of the rules, some of the checklists in here and it's going to go and input the hook we've written into here as well. But what we can actually do is we can start actually deleting stuff. We can start editing our document here and writing and working alongside Claude. There's also functionality in here as well to show all comments. So I could actually highlight some of this text and actually make a comment and be

16:21like, "Hey, I really like this. Remember this. Grab this information." Or I could actually say, "Can we merge these two sections into one point, please?" Because they're kind of the same. and I can work and just go through and comment and give it feedback and kind of delegate tasks, which is the way we really want to be working with AI now is you're sitting as the delegator, not the one actually pressing buttons on the keyboard. I don't really need to go and

16:43merge these two sections manually. That's a job that AI can do once we've got the information on the page that we want. Now, there's all sorts of things you can do in the dock here. We can highlight, we can strike through. It's kind of just like working in a normal Word document, but we don't have to leave Claude. Again, there's also options to do similar. We can do it for spreadsheets and we can do it for slides as well. So, you can create whole PowerPoint documentations and spreadsheets in Claude as well and have them fully editable. You don't lose your flow of work now and think like, oh, I

17:14better switch to Google Sheets or something like that. Although there is a Google Sheets connector and workspace connector and compatibility in Claude now, it's a lot slower than just doing everything in Claude. There's not really a lot of reason to leave the app in my opinion, especially as we can use the share feature at the top and I can export this as a word document, as a PDF, as markdown to Google Docs, to notion or we can actually invite people on your team to edit, view, share publicly, etc. as well. So, we're getting all this functionality in here really nicely for us to start working with. Those are all the key updates that

17:49you really need to be aware of for Claude Co. If you'd rather not do this alone and you want to stay ahead of the game, then that's exactly what we do in my halfday Thursdays community. We have the AI jump start course in here which just walks you through things, every single button, the setups that you really need to pay attention to. We have live calls every week. We even have now the AI business blueprint which walks you through how to build an AI native business with Claude. This is just buildalong step-by-step clickalong modules as well as so many different resources in here. We've got all of my

18:21skills and plugins library as well for you to work with that are plugandplay and you can just get on with running your business as a soloreneur or a small business rather than just trying to figure out for yourself how to make Claude work for E.