Prerequisite: None. The workshop assumes no programming knowledge and no prior experience with Claude.
Claude Cowork is Anthropic’s agentic desktop app for people who do not write code. It drafts and edits documents, builds spreadsheets and slide decks, searches the web, and completes multi-step tasks with light supervision. In this half-day workshop, Donald Farmer will introduce Cowork to new users and show how to get dependable work from it.
Donald will demonstrate Cowork live throughout the class. Students will watch it draft a document, gather and summarize research, analyze a data set, and build a reusable workflow that runs again on new material. After each demonstration, Donald will explain how he framed the task; he will show what he stated, what he left to the agent, and how he checked the output.
Attendees will leave knowing what Cowork does well, what it cannot do reliably, and how to apply it to your own everyday tasks.
Your Team Will Learn
- What Claude Cowork is, and how it differs from the Claude chat interface
- How Cowork reads, drafts, and edits documents, spreadsheets, and presentations
- How Cowork uses the browser to gather and check information
- How to frame a task so that Cowork returns useful work on the first attempt
- How to direct Cowork through research, data analysis, and drafting jobs
- How to build reusable workflows that you and your colleagues can run repeatedly
- How Cowork can fail, and how to review its output before you rely on it
Geared To
- Business analysts and data analysts
- Managers and team leads who produce reports, plans, and presentations
- Consultants and advisors who prepare client deliverables
- Operations, finance, and marketing professionals who work daily in documents and spreadsheets
- Data and analytics leaders evaluating agentic AI for their teams
Laptop Setup
Students do not need a laptop for this course. Donald demonstrates everything live; attendees can follow the whole session without a device.
To apply what they have learned after the course, students will require a Windows PC or Mac with:
- The current Claude Desktop app installed and signed in
- A paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise)