The Right Way to Onboard Claude Cowork

0:00Claude CoWork has gotten so powerful people are switching from their agents to CoWork to get things done, but there's a problem. You need to set it up to have it know about you, to have it know about your company, to give it access to the tools. All these things take forever, except today's guest has one skill that will walk you through doing it all and by the end of this session, you're going to have Claude CoWork dialed in to be

0:20your super agent. Let's get started. Presented by Zapier, the AI automation company. The biggest mistake that people make is they jump into Claude CoWork and they start using it like a normal chatbot and in reality, they're only getting maybe 10% of the value out of it that they could be getting if they took the 15 to 20 minutes it takes to essentially onboard themselves to

0:41CoWork. And what we found is that literally nobody's doing this right. So, we just built a skill, again, that we're going to be giving away to the audience that they can download, drag and drop into their CoWork, run the onboarding command, and then Claude is going to literally walk them through onboarding step-by-step, so that 15 minutes later, Claude fully understands the person, their business, and is connected to all

1:07their tools with working memory. Shouldn't I just go and get these skills like the LinkedIn hook writer or the YouTube outliner? Isn't that what I want versus having CoWork know me? So, let's take the LinkedIn post writer skill for example, right? This skill is one that I built Mhm. that based on 900 successful LinkedIn posts that I scraped from LinkedIn. Now, this skill is a good start. It's going to write posts in a good format that the algorithm likes and is proven to be successful for other creators, but if I haven't run the CoWork onboarding, Claude is going to write me a LinkedIn post that sounds just like everybody

1:43else. It's going to sound like generic AI output. So, one of the things that we do actually during the CoWork onboarding is create what we call your brand voice skill, and that brand voice skill is the foundation for everything else. That's what allows Claude to talk like you, right? And that's what's going to make, for example, my LinkedIn post writer skill sound like it came from me versus

2:08like it came from an AI chatbot. I see. Okay, this is the skill that makes all the other skills sound less generic, be more directly related to me, and more magical. So, how about this? Can we do a before and after? Is there a skill, either one that I can get on my own or one from you, that I can try before this customization and then run again after the customization and see what happens? Yeah, I like that. So, what I'll do is I'll take the LinkedIn post writer skill right here. I'm going to send that over to you. Okay. And then, after we've gone through CoWork

2:39onboarding, which remember, part of it is going to have you build that brand voice skill, once we have that brand voice skill in place, I'm curious to see if the quality of the LinkedIn post after the fact looks better. This is the LinkedIn skill that you gave me. This is the build with AI skill that we're going to give everyone in the

2:56audience. Go. I click that plus sign in the top right. Yeah. And then, create skill and upload directly.

3:07All right. So, now I'm going to use this. Let's try it. Now, what it's probably going to ask you to do is what topic you want to write Is it going to interview me or is it just going to start writing? So, it's probably just going to start writing. All right. I get this. This is pretty generic story that does use some of what it knows about me because it's picking out like the company name, what we focus on because I must have had conversations like that. All right. Now,

3:32let's do it better. So, go back to customize. Mhm. And then, personal plugins, add plugin, and then upload. Upload. And then, you can drag and drop. CoWork onboarding skill right there. Okay. So, that's going to kind of give you a breakdown of what the skill actually does. So, really, it's the that description there at the top is probably the most succinct way of understanding what it does under the actual description. I got it. 15 minutes and I know you've got a full setup of 45. Are we going to do the 15-minute setup right now? We can kind of speed run the full setup. We don't need to connect any of your tools cuz I

4:08know you're on a a fresh machine, and we can kind of give it some quick answers for building the general context files. Okay. So, let's do it. It won't be 45. We're just going to speed run through it. Anything that we need to, we'll skip, and I think we should just get started like this, right? Try it now. Yeah, so I would even go So, go back to new task again just to kind of show people from soup to nuts how you would work it. So, delete that and then you can do backslash

4:34CoWork onboarding. So, you can simply run that command and say, uh let's go through the full setup.

4:47And so, what it's doing when you give it that {slash} CoWork {dash} onboarding command is it's going in and reading that skill file and saying, "Okay, what does the CoWork onboarding command actually do?" And it's going to see, "Well, okay, now I'm supposed to walk Andrew through an onboarding session. He indicated specifically that he wants to do the full setup, so it knows that it's going to build each of those files systematically one by one. Do you want me to kind of talk you through what it's

5:13doing? Okay. think it's helpful because even if people aren't installing this skill, they'll still get an understanding of how they can customize CoWork to themselves by understanding what we're doing here. Exactly. So, the first thing that it's asking you to do is it wants you to create a dedicated folder on your computer for two reasons. One, that's where it's going to save the context files that we're building during the session, and then two, that's where it's going to save any of the output that it creates

5:40during the session as well. Okay.

5:47So, you're essentially pointing CoWork at that folder and that's where all the files are going to go once it builds them. And now, you see, what I love about CoWork is that that progress bar in the top right gives you pretty much the full menu of everything that we're going to cover with this plugin. All right, let's do it. So, full structure? Yep. What's cool about the onboarding is it's definitely quicker than 45 minutes because a lot of what it asks you, you can kind of multiple choice or select from the options that Claude gives you as opposed to having to

6:16type or talk everything out. Oh, yeah, I've got these connectors already. So, we're going to skip it for now. I've got enough connectors, but essentially what people could do is add even more tools that they use to this, right? I'll skip it. Exactly. Yep. I do love using Notion in this because I could say save this note and it remembers the database that I saved the note in. I could tell it what database to save things in. It's so helpful. Oh, I see, it's picking that up from the

6:39connectors. Interesting. Yeah, so if you've already got something connected, which you do in this case, you have Google Workspace, but even if you didn't, let's say you connected your email or your Google Drive right now for the first time, it would do exactly what it just did for you. It's going to go in there and start to pick up context about you and your life and how you work just from connecting your tools. That's why that tool connection step is first because again, a lot of the context that it needs to build your context files that we're going to build here in a couple of steps, it can get a lot of

7:13that from your tool connections, which is really cool. So, one thing that I've noticed is it found that I have a brand guide for BG, but we're using a different brand. All right. Maybe this is where I tell it that's the brand that I want it to focus on. The next new thing. I noticed TNNT brand guide in Notion. Let me pull that for your contacts. Oh, that's so I love the way the Claude thinks. It's so good. So, it actually pulled your launch post from TNNT, I assume, from Notion to get an idea for your brand voice from that post, and now it's going to ask you a few questions to kind of

7:49fill in the cracks. Describe your communication tone. Curious and ambitious. I like that. [laughter] So, are all the interview questions going to be like that? Very little little typing, more of selecting? It is. It's mostly selecting, but I mean, I've, for example, I've run this like on screen share with people who they really want to be as nuanced as possible, so they will type in an answer for every single question. Mhm. And then, I've done it with other people who just they kind of want to zip through it, so they'll choose one of the, you know, the selectable answers on pretty much every question. So, it's really how

8:24nuanced you want to be with it at the end of the day. When Claude starts a task for you, what do you prefer? Ask clarifying questions. I like that. What format? Oh, so you want your default output to be in Notion. I like that. I've actually never seen anybody do that, but that's smart. Because it's also good about giving me a link to the page. How detailed should Claude's responses be? Concise and direct. I do not like. Uh the last I say the same thing, yeah. By the way, look at what it's creating for me. Brand voice {dot} MD, about me {dot} MD, working style MD, instructions for

8:53Claude MD. All the stuff that I usually do on my own when I work with the Claude code. All three context files are now saved. Let me make some changes. I never want Word documents unless I specifically ask for them. No fluff or filler. Light mode always. Backup Oh, this is so freaking good. it How did it know that? We were talking about that before we started recording,

9:14right? so good. This is looking real nice. Let's look at brand voice. Now, the brand I will say the brand voice is the one where like just this document alone is going to be 10 times better than what most people have, which is nothing, right? So, just this document alone is going to help the AI sound more like you. But where the brand voice really gets powerful is where you give it reference files. Now, Andrew, you, as someone who's recorded over 2200 podcast episodes, and you have uh an active X account, like you're doing a lot of writing, you have the ability to to significantly beef up your brand voice file by giving

9:53it those reference files, so that's something where you could point Cowerk at say your 10 most recent podcast interviews and your you know, most recent week of tweets and say, "Hey, go pull the transcripts from these podcast episodes and then go pull my 7 days of recent tweets and then save those as reference files. So, that way when Claude is typing in your brand voice, it it knows exactly what you sound like and what you don't because it can see how you write and it can see how you talk from those transcripts." Why

10:26would I do that? So, you could literally just point Cowerk at it. Say, "Hey, here's the page to Oh, I mean within the setup, would I do it right now? Interrupt it? I would wait till the end. At the end, I would say, "Hey, now I want to go and add some reference files to my brand voice." Okay. And you could either drag and drop in the transcripts or you could have it go out and grab them. But, that's how I would do it at the end. It's like, "Hey, let's just add something essentially to improve the brand voice." Uh oh, I So, this skill is just essentially a

10:53structured way for people to personalize Claude to themselves. That's really all it is. All right, let's talk about while it's doing it, what these files are. Brand voice, this is so it knows what my company's about. Working style is how I like to work. Yep. Um global instructions, what's that? It's essentially the master system prompt for Cowerk. Right? So, that's what that file is. We can go inside that, copy it and then paste it into the master system prompt inside Cowerk. So, that way it it operates from that context every time. All right, and about me is so that it knows information about me and it doesn't have to hunt through

11:29my files to get it. Right. And so, from this point on, you could, if you want to, just for the sake of the exercise, you could skip through here. You could really skip through the rest of it or you could type in say, "Hey, we can conclude onboarding for now." Because we really kind of hit on

11:44everything. But, get the latest interviews. I'll get the transcript of the latest 10 interviews that I published on mixergy.com/interviews as reference files about me. By the way, here it is doing it. This is so interesting. Inside of Chrome, yeah. I didn't anticipate it was going to do it in Chrome. I thought it was just going to go headless on it. Okay, so it's just going to keep going through here

12:19and grab it. Okay. I see how it works now. Yes. going through the archives. It is going to save each one individually. Really interesting. I get the picture. Now, I understand also how it can read my X posts. Now, I get it. Now, should we go into LinkedIn and see if we can create more posts or

12:40how about if we give it my LinkedIn? Tell it to go look at my LinkedIn posts instead of my interviews? What I would do is I would point it at your latest post and ask it to repurpose the post using the LinkedIn post writer skill and then see what it gives you for that. Should we do that now or do it as a LinkedIn writers as a new project? Uh I would do it as a new task just because if if you do it inside there, it's just

13:02going to eat a lot of tokens. Yeah, okay. So, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to stop this. I now see how easy it is. The goal is to have Cowerk know me so that it can better serve me and know the tools that I use so it can be more of an agent. Now, I'm going to come back into this and I'm going to reference the LinkedIn post writer. And make sure you're working

13:22inside where it says work in a project. Make sure you're pointing it at the folder that we just created. And that where it says work in a project Work in a project here. Got it. Yes, right there. Ah, okay. Got it. So, now it's got all the files that we just created in that folder. We're going to say use the LinkedIn

13:37skill. LinkedIn post writer. I think we didn't give it any direction. We just said write a post, yeah. Like that. Let's see what it does. Okay. Great. A business lesson aimed at founders and CEOs to make this post hit hard with specific details. I need more about you. Uh what's the core story? Let's say before and after journey. Um do you have any specific numbers or

14:01results you'd like to include? Sure.

14:09Share the details and I'll craft I'll I see. Interesting. I'll in- interview me instead. So, this is still different from what it did before. I'm going to skip it just to be fair. Obviously, I would ordinarily fill in the gaps, but I'm going to try to not give it any more information than it has just to see what it's like when

14:24it's going from clean verse clean. Uh what's your before story? Starting from zero. I see. Now, it's asking me a lot more questions than it did before. Interesting. And it could just be because you have more context files for it to kind of go off of, but you know, each session is different. So, who knows? I see what it did here. It used a really good hook. But, a lot of this is because it asked me more

14:51questions this time than before. Right. It collected a lot more context just up front. Here's the thing. I've heard from people who use Cowerk that the answer to getting better results is connecting more things, demanding more of it instead of just asking questions and having it know you. What you've done here is filled in the gap with how I get it to know me better. It's those files that we just showed and what you created was a skill that will walk people through a set of questions that will

15:17have the basics for those files set up. And in addition, connect those tools that we said will help and then start scheduling so that they can have results on demand. Do I have that right? You nailed it. Yep, you hit the nail on the head. All right, we're going to have that in the show notes so anyone who wants to can walk through this on their own. And of course, you now see the different files that will help Claude get to know you in the different capabilities that you can bring on to get more out of Claude Cowerk. This is great. Thank you, Corey. Thank you for

15:44having me, Andrew. Hey, my agent says that if you watch this far, you're going to want to subscribe. And Google thinks that if you watch this far, you'll want to watch that video.