Copy-paste prompts and complete setups from people who use Cowork every day. No theory — just what works.
CEO or founder managing multiple roles. You have 90 seconds before your day explodes. You need to queue work from anywhere, not just at your desk.
Create: Active Work → Today's Work. This is where Claude queues tasks and outputs pile up. You review from this single folder.
Connect your email and calendar. Claude can now read incoming messages and your day's schedule to prioritize intelligently.
Install Claude on your phone. You can message Claude from Dispatch at 6 AM and watch the queue build. Desktop handles execution while you shower.
Prioritized email drafts ready to send. A content calendar in HTML with story ideas, sourced and themed. Files organized by project and task type — all before you sit down at your desk.
Inspired by Christian Pean MD, Techy Surgeon
Anyone starting with automation. You don't need ten tasks. Start with three. Let them run for a week and feel the difference before you add anything else.
Connect your email and calendar so Claude can read them as part of each scheduled task.
Make sure Cowork has permission to run scheduled tasks. This happens during setup, but verify in Settings if tasks don't fire.
A morning HTML briefing with your day's priorities. Pre-meeting prep with talking points and questions. End-of-day summary with follow-ups flagged and ready for tomorrow.
0 9 * * 1-5 for weekdays at 9 AM, 30 8 * * 1 for Mondays at 8:30 AM.
Inspired by Christian Pean MD, Techy Surgeon
Consultant, lawyer, agency professional. You produce the same type of deliverable repeatedly. You want consistent quality and fast turnaround.
Add your report template (.docx). Include 2 strong past examples as reference. Add the client brief and any reference docs. Include project instructions: "Include executive summary. Never exceed 15 pages. Structure: summary → findings → recommendations → next steps → appendix. Output as .docx."
A templated Word document with executive summary, findings, recommendations, next steps, and appendix. All formatted to your style, based on the template and examples you provided.
Inspired by Ruben Hassid, How to AI
Founder prepping for investor meetings. Analyst sizing a market. Sales rep researching accounts. Anyone who needs research they can actually trust.
Most people ask Claude to 'research X' and get a generic summary with no sources. This approach uses a recursive research loop — the same methodology behind dedicated research skills that produce 15-30 page cited dossiers. The difference is structure: Claude decomposes the research into sub-questions, probes sources in priority order, tracks confidence on every claim, and separates evidence from inference.
| Step | What Happens |
|---|---|
| Probe | Search sources in priority order: official site → social channels → reviews → press/third-party |
| Decompose | Break each section into 3-6 sub-questions. No claims without citations. |
| Recurse | For each sub-question, inspect sources, write a mini-brief with citations + confidence |
| Synthesize | Combine mini-briefs into the final section. Resolve conflicts between sources. |
Inline citations with source, date accessed, and confidence (High / Medium / Unconfirmed). No naked claims.
Company-stated claims vs. third-party corroboration vs. inference. Each labeled explicitly.
If not publicly disclosed, write "No public disclosure found as of [date]" instead of guessing.
Person Research:
Company Research:
Industry/Market Research:
A 10-25 page Word document with inline citations, confidence scores, a source pack (12-25 annotated links), comparison tables, and an executive summary. The output quality depends on the prompt structure — the recursive loop and evidence rules are what separate this from a generic 'research X' request.
Research methodology by Steve Gustafson
Anyone with data who needs visuals fast. You have the data. You don't care about the technical implementation. You want a dashboard you can share.
That's it. No plugins, no connectors, no special configuration. Just add your data file to the project folder.
A single-file HTML dashboard with Chart.js, dropdown filters, summary cards, responsive design. Fully interactive. Share via email or Slack. Works in any browser.
Executive managing multiple domains. Anyone who wants the complete automated intelligence system. Start with three tasks. By week four, you have a personal operating system.
This isn't a single workflow — it's what happens when you combine the previous five into a system. Start with the Essential Three (Workflow 2). Add one domain-specific task per week. By week four, you have a personalized operating layer that handles your morning briefing, meeting prep, recurring research, deliverable production, and end-of-day wrap-up — without you re-explaining anything.
Morning briefing, meeting prep, evening debrief. Just these. Get comfortable with the rhythm. Notice what changes in your day.
Pick from the menu below based on your role. One task only. Don't add more until you see the value from this one.
By now you see which automations actually save time vs. create noise. Add the second one based on what worked.
You now have a personalized operating system. Iterate weekly. Remove what doesn't work. Add what does.
Scan emails for stale sales conversations. Flag deals going cold. Alert on inactivity over 2 weeks.
Monitor 3-5 competitor sites for pricing, features, blog, and hiring changes. Deliver as a weekly summary.
Compile customer emails and tickets by priority. Flag escalations. Summarize by issue type.
Scan relevant government sources weekly for policy changes. Alert on changes that affect your business.
Scan emails for invoices. Extract amounts, vendors, dates. Flag items over your threshold for review.
A complete context file + recommended scheduled task library tailored to your actual work. Over time, scoped memory learns your patterns and the outputs get sharper. By week 8, Claude knows your priorities better than most people around you.
Inspired by Christian Pean MD, Techy Surgeon
You don't need all six. Pick the workflow closest to your daily pain. Set it up. Run it for a week. Then come back for the next one.