# Claude Cowork playbooks

Cowork is Anthropic's agent mode for knowledge work. It takes the Claude Code approach of planning and running multi-step tasks and applies it to files, spreadsheets, reports and research, with no terminal. Anthropic is now merging it into the main Claude app, so chat and Cowork share one message box and Claude decides when a request is a task.

- Vendor: Anthropic
- Kind: personal-agent
- Surfaces: desktop, web, mobile, browser
- Connects: Tasks use the connectors you enable, under a Manual, Auto or Skip permission mode. Plugins bundle skills, connectors and sub-agents. On desktop it has a built-in browser, or it can work in your own Chrome through Claude in Chrome. It asks before it deletes files.

- Docs: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13345190-get-started-with-cowork

## Good at

- Multi-step office work such as reconciling spreadsheets, drafting reports and reviewing many documents at once
- Scheduled tasks that run on their own and deliver files you can preview and download
- Splitting a large job into parallel parts and showing each step so you can redirect or stop it
- Using your connectors, skills and plugins inside one task

## Limits

- It needs a paid plan, and Anthropic says it uses your usage limits faster than chat
- Local folders, your own browser and computer use need the desktop app, and computer use is still a research preview
- Sessions cannot be shared, only the artifacts they produce
- Network egress settings do not cover web fetch, web search or MCP tools, so review what you connect before a long task

## Playbooks (17)

- [Audit your draft folder and surface the post closest to ready](https://agentshandbook.com/p/audit-draft-folder-and-surface-the-most-ready-post.md): You get a short list of genuinely unpublished drafts ranked by how close they are to done, with the top pick named and a brief reason why. (trust: reported, risk: low)
- [Brief yourself on every external meeting guest before your day starts](https://agentshandbook.com/p/brief-yourself-on-external-meeting-guests.md): Before your first meeting you have one short brief per external meeting, with sources for every claim about each guest. (trust: corroborated, risk: medium)
- [Build a personal knowledge base wiki that a coding agent maintains from your notes](https://agentshandbook.com/p/build-a-personal-knowledge-base-wiki-from-your-notes.md): You have a folder of interlinked markdown pages with an index and a change log, built from your sources, that you can read in Obsidian and query through the agent, with every change reviewable in git.
 (trust: corroborated, risk: low)
- [Do a literature review with an agent that finds, screens and summarises real papers](https://agentshandbook.com/p/do-a-literature-review-of-papers-on-a-topic.md): You get a screening log, an evidence table with one row per included paper, a synthesis that cites only papers you hold, and a reference list where every entry resolves to a real record.
 (trust: corroborated, risk: medium)
- [Draft your weekly newsletter from the links you saved, in your own voice](https://agentshandbook.com/p/draft-weekly-newsletter-from-reading-list.md): You get a draft issue with a short, sourced summary of each link you saved, grouped by theme, plus a list of links the agent could not read. (trust: corroborated, risk: medium)
- [Enrich and qualify new inbound leads, then route them with a reason a person can check](https://agentshandbook.com/p/enrich-and-qualify-inbound-leads.md): Each new lead gets a researched summary, a score, a route and a draft reply, and a person approves the action before anything changes in the CRM or reaches the lead. (trust: corroborated, risk: medium)
- [Gather your tax documents into one folder and write a checked summary for your accountant](https://agentshandbook.com/p/prepare-tax-documents-and-a-summary-for-your-accountant.md): Your accountant gets one tidy folder, a list of every form with its key figures and source, a list of missing documents, and your open questions. (trust: corroborated, risk: high)
- [Get a short morning digest of your personal inbox with read-only access](https://agentshandbook.com/p/triage-your-personal-inbox-into-a-morning-digest.md): Each morning you read one short digest with links to the emails that need you, and nothing in your inbox has changed. (trust: corroborated, risk: medium)
- [Research a list of target accounts and draft first emails for you to review and send](https://agentshandbook.com/p/research-accounts-and-draft-first-emails.md): You get a table of researched accounts with a fit score, sources and one draft email each, and nothing is sent until you approve it. (trust: corroborated, risk: high)
- [Research a specific property address and compile a dossier on sales, zoning, and risk](https://agentshandbook.com/p/research-a-property-address-and-build-a-dossier.md): You get a structured dossier covering the key data points for a specific property, with sources for each claim, ready to cross-check before you rely on it. (trust: reported, risk: medium)
- [Search for unclaimed money under every name and in every state you have lived in](https://agentshandbook.com/p/search-unclaimed-property-in-every-state-you-lived-in.md): You get a table of real matching records from official state sites, each with a link, and you file the claims you choose on those sites yourself. (trust: corroborated, risk: medium)
- [Sort a messy Downloads or photos folder without losing a single file](https://agentshandbook.com/p/sort-a-messy-downloads-folder.md): Your folder is sorted into a small set of named subfolders, nothing is deleted, and you have a log of every move that you can reverse. (trust: corroborated, risk: high)
- [Triage your support inbox and draft replies that a person approves before sending](https://agentshandbook.com/p/triage-support-inbox-with-approved-replies.md): Every new support email gets a label, a priority and a draft reply grounded in your docs, and a person sends each reply after reading it. (trust: corroborated, risk: high)
- [Triage your work inbox overnight and prep tomorrow's calendar with a scheduled agent](https://agentshandbook.com/p/triage-work-email-overnight-and-prep-tomorrow.md): Each morning you get one brief with the emails that need you, draft replies waiting in your drafts folder, and a list of calendar problems to fix. (trust: corroborated, risk: high)
- [Turn flight, hotel and booking confirmation emails into calendar events](https://agentshandbook.com/p/turn-booking-emails-into-calendar-events.md): Every booking in the date range sits on your calendar once, at the right local time, with the confirmation number and address in the event. (trust: corroborated, risk: low)
- [Turn meeting transcripts into tasks in your tracker, with a quote behind each one](https://agentshandbook.com/p/turn-meeting-transcripts-into-tracker-tasks.md): Every real commitment from the meeting is a task in your tracker with the right owner, a due date and a quote from the transcript, and nothing is invented or duplicated. (trust: corroborated, risk: medium)
- [Watch competitors' pricing and product pages and get a weekly briefing of real changes](https://agentshandbook.com/p/monitor-competitor-pricing-pages-weekly.md): Every week you get a short briefing of meaningful changes to competitors' pricing and product pages, each with the before text, the after text and a link to the saved snapshot. (trust: corroborated, risk: low)

## Lessons

- [Sales agents drift from their rules unless someone keeps sampling the output](https://agentshandbook.com/lessons/agent-quality-drifts-without-sampling.md)
- [Desktop and terminal agents delete files while they tidy up](https://agentshandbook.com/lessons/agents-delete-files-while-organizing.md)
- [Agents put calendar events at the wrong hour when time zones are involved](https://agentshandbook.com/lessons/agents-shift-event-times-across-time-zones.md)
- [AI-personalised cold emails read as generic or pitch the wrong thing](https://agentshandbook.com/lessons/ai-outreach-personalisation-reads-generic.md)
- [A calendar invite from a stranger can hijack the assistant that reads your calendar](https://agentshandbook.com/lessons/calendar-invites-can-hijack-your-assistant.md)
- [Scheduled agents break quietly when a connector or node version changes](https://agentshandbook.com/lessons/connector-updates-silently-break-scheduled-agents.md)
- [An email can carry hidden instructions to the agent that reads it](https://agentshandbook.com/lessons/email-can-carry-instructions-to-your-agent.md)
- [Support bots invent policies and refund terms that customers then act on](https://agentshandbook.com/lessons/support-bots-invent-policies.md)