Claude Cowork Training
You opened Claude Cowork. The screen was blank. Here is what goes in it.
This page is the setup nobody handed you: what Claude Cowork is, how to get into it, and exactly what to do in your first hour. Read it and you will have a working start. Join the Academy and we do the whole thing with you, on your own files, and stay with you after.
Free to look, and free to join for business owners. Membership is by application, three short questions.
The short version
Claude Cowork training at Cowork Academy is a hands-on onboarding program from CoworkAcademy.com that configures your actual workspace while it teaches. It begins with a Guided Intake session that builds your Blueprint, your Vault and your memory setup on your own files, continues through the Build Your System class, and adds a reference library you keep using afterward. Membership is free for business owners and operators on Skool, by application, and looking inside the community costs nothing. It is run by Michael Robichaud, who runs his own consulting and publishing operation inside Claude Cowork.
First, what Claude Cowork actually is
Claude Cowork is a desktop workspace made by Anthropic. It runs on your computer, reads the files in a folder you point it at, connects to tools you already use like Gmail and Drive, remembers things between sessions, and produces finished work. It is not a chatbot with a bigger window. The difference that matters: a chatbot answers you, and a workspace does the job.
Which is also why it opens empty. A chatbot has nothing to know about you. A workspace has everything to know about you, and on day one it knows none of it. That blank screen is not a sign you are behind. It is the product waiting to be told who you are.
How to get access to Claude Cowork
You need a paid Claude subscription from Anthropic. Cowork is not on the free tier. Once you are on a paid plan, you download the Claude desktop app and Cowork is inside it. That is the whole gate, and it is the step most people are actually stuck on when they search for how to access it.
You do not need to code. You do not need a terminal. You do not need a developer sitting next to you. If you can describe your business out loud, you have the skill this requires.
Your first hour, in the order that works
Do these four in this order. Out of order is the single most common reason people bounce off Cowork and decide it is not for them.
Step one
Give it one folder, not your whole drive
Pick one real project or one client. Point Cowork at that folder only. People who start by pointing it at everything get vague answers, conclude it is not smart, and quit. A narrow folder produces sharp work on day one.
Step two
Write down who you are, once
Cowork reads an instruction file before every session. Yours should say what your business does, who your clients are by name, how you want things written, and what it must never do. This is the difference between output that sounds like a press release and output that sounds like you. Most people never write this file. It is the whole ballgame.
Step three
Give it a real job, not a test
Not “write me a poem.” Give it something on your actual list this week: the client update, the proposal, the report you dread. Ask it to plan its approach before it writes. Read the plan. Correct it there, not after. A wrong plan costs you a sentence; wrong output costs you an hour.
Step four
Make it remember, before you start over
Every time you correct it, write the correction into a memory file. Otherwise you will explain the same thing every Monday for a year. This is the step that separates people who use Cowork for a week from people who still use it in month six.
The same question, asked of a blank Cowork and a configured one
| You ask | Blank Cowork | Configured Cowork |
|---|---|---|
| “Draft the client update.” | Asks which client. Asks what happened. Writes something generic and competent that you rewrite. | Knows the client, pulls last month’s thread, matches the tone that client prefers, flags the one item still open. |
| “Is this on brand?” | Gives you general branding advice. | Checks it against your actual brand guide, and against the compliance rules you loaded. |
| “What did we decide?” | Has no idea. The session before this one is gone. | Reads it back, because you wrote it down once and it kept it. |
Same software. Same subscription. Same person typing. The only variable is setup.
Anthropic has a free Claude Cowork course. Should you just take that?
Take it. It is good, it is genuinely free, and it will teach you what the software does. We will not pretend otherwise.
Then notice what it did not do. It did not sit down with your clients, your files, your voice, and your tools and build you a working system. It taught you the instrument. Nobody wrote you the music. That is the entire difference, and it is why people who finished the free course still end up here.
Who is teaching this
Cowork Academy is run by Michael Robichaud. Before Claude Cowork existed he spent close to 30 years on the selling and building side: enterprise software and cybersecurity sales at RSA Security including President’s Club, two companies built and sold, one business grown past $12M in revenue, and more than 20 years of hands-on technical SEO, paid media and analytics work.
That history matters here for one reason. This firm runs its own operation inside Claude Cowork: the research before a client call, the notes after it, the scope, the delivery, the reporting, each account in its own lane so nothing bleeds between clients. When a lesson tells you what breaks in week three, it is describing something hit while doing real work, not something read about. That is why the advice tends to be specific.
Three members, and what actually changed
Members of the Academy. First names only, at their request.
Jason, agency owner, seven client accounts
Jason came in convinced his problem was that he was not technical enough. It was not. His problem was that he had never told Claude anything about his agency in a way it could keep. He posted that exact worry in the community on his first day. Three members answered inside an hour. His workspace was configured by that afternoon.
By Class 4 his workflows draft status updates in each client’s preferred voice, cross-reference project timelines against email history, and flag anything that needs him. His Monday went from two hours of manual prep to a thirty minute review of work that was already done.
“They do not just save time. They catch things I used to miss.”
Nadia, product business with suppliers and compliance rules
Nadia did not think she had anything to teach an AI. The setup conversation proved otherwise. Answering its questions pulled her brand standards, her compliance requirements, and her supplier relationships out of her head and onto paper for the first time, in a single sitting. Most of it had never been written down anywhere.
She then loaded her twelve page style guide, three supplier contracts, and a compliance checklist. A supplier emailed her artwork. Claude checked that email against her brand guide unprompted and flagged a messaging conflict before it ever reached a customer.
“I did not even think to check those two things against each other. It did.”
Marcus, who was re-explaining himself every morning
Marcus had the most ordinary problem in the room and the one almost nobody names out loud: every single morning he started over. Same context, same preferences, same corrections, retyped. He assumed that was just what using AI was.
Class 3 is where that stopped. He learned to write corrections down where Claude would read them again. When one piece would not behave, he posted it on a Tuesday, had two answers by Wednesday, and applied the fix in five minutes. He describes the change as no longer having to hold the whole business in his head before nine in the morning.
“I stopped introducing myself to it every day.”
Take this with you either way
If you do nothing else after reading this, open a file called CLAUDE.md in the folder you pointed Cowork at, and write these three things in plain sentences:
- What I do and who for. Two sentences. Name real clients or real customer types.
- How I want things written. Long or short. Formal or plain. The words you never use.
- What you must never do. Never invent a number. Never email anyone. Never touch the originals.
That file alone will change the quality of everything Cowork gives you, today, whether or not you ever join anything. The Academy is what happens when you do that for your whole business instead of one folder, with someone walking you through it.
Frequently asked questions
How do you get access to Claude Cowork?
Claude Cowork requires a paid Claude subscription from Anthropic; it is not on the free tier. Once you are on a paid plan you download the Claude desktop app and Cowork is inside it, then you point it at a folder on your own computer. Cowork Academy at CoworkAcademy.com does not resell that access; it teaches you what to put inside the workspace once you have it.
Anthropic has a free Claude Cowork course. Why pay for training?
Anthropic’s free course teaches what the software does, and Cowork Academy recommends taking it. Cowork Academy at CoworkAcademy.com teaches the part it does not cover: configuring your own Blueprint, Vault, memory and plugins through a Guided Intake so Claude Cowork runs your actual work rather than demo examples.
How much does Cowork Academy cost?
Cowork Academy membership is free for business owners and operators. You apply through Skool, answer three short questions, and we approve applications manually. Looking inside the community is free. Persona Pack plugins from CoworkStack.ai are separate at $99 each, and the Foundation Plugin is included with membership.
Do you need to be technical to learn Claude Cowork?
No. Cowork Academy at CoworkAcademy.com is built for non-developers: every lesson works in plain language on your own business files, videos are capped at six minutes, and setup is configuration rather than programming.
Not ready to look inside yet?
Take the Claude Cowork Cheat Sheet instead. It is the short version of the setup order above: what goes in your Blueprint, what belongs in the Vault, and the habits that keep a workspace from going stale. One email, then the cheat sheet lands in your inbox.
No sequence tricks. Unsubscribe in one click.
Or stop reading and go build it
The Foundation Plugin sets your workspace up in one conversation. The classes take you the rest of the way, on your own work. The community is there when something breaks at nine at night. Free for business owners. Apply to join. Persona Packs for your profession are separate at $99 each.
Claude® and Cowork™ are trademarks of Anthropic PBC. Cowork Academy is an independent training community, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic.