Claude Cowork: 15 Example Tasks and Prompts

The best Claude Cowork tasks are ones you can describe as a finished thing: a folder sorted a certain way, a spreadsheet with named tabs, a report with a source for every claim. Say the outcome, the inputs and the format, and Cowork plans the steps, does them and comes back with files. Below are fifteen examples that stay inside what Anthropic documents today, each with a prompt to adapt and the point where Claude should stop and ask you. What Cowork is, and how its projects work, is covered in Claude projects in Cowork; this piece is only about what to ask it for.

Setup, in one paragraph

Anthropic’s guide to getting started with Claude Cowork↗ (opens in a new tab) says it is on paid plans (Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise, with Enterprise depending on the admin), on desktop, web and mobile. Sessions run in an isolated cloud environment and keep going if you close your laptop. Anything that reads your local files, drives a browser or uses your computer goes through the Claude Desktop app, which has to be open. For email and calendar examples, connect the Gmail and Google Calendar connectors first. If your message box no longer shows separate Chat and Cowork options, you have the merged experience: ask for the same things from any conversation.

How to write a Cowork prompt

• The outcome: what exists when it is done, and where.
• The inputs: which folder, which files, which sources, and which to ignore.
• The format: file type, structure, length, naming.
• The stop points: what it must ask you before doing, and what it must not do at all.

Files and folders

1. Sort a messy folder. “In my connected Downloads folder, sort every file into subfolders by type and year. Do not delete anything; put anything you cannot classify in a folder called Unsorted and list those files in a short note.” Claude needs your explicit permission before permanently deleting any file, and this prompt removes the question.
2. Rename in bulk. “Rename the scans in Receipts to YYYY-MM-DD_supplier_amount using what is printed on each one. Show me the first ten old and new names before you rename the rest.”
3. Receipts to an expense report. “Read every receipt in Receipts/September and build an expense spreadsheet: date, supplier, category, amount, VAT, file name. Total by category on a second tab. Flag any receipt you could not read.”

Research

1. A sourced brief. “Research the main options for e-invoicing compliance for a small UK business. Write a two-page brief with a table comparing approaches, and cite a source for every factual claim. Mark anything you could not confirm.”
2. Themes from interviews. “These eight interview transcripts are from customer calls. Pull out the five most common themes, with two direct quotes each and which interview they came from.”
3. A competitor summary from pages you name. “Read the product pages at these five URLs and summarise what each offers for team permissions, in one table. Use only these pages.” Naming the URLs matters: the getting-started guide says web fetch runs on Anthropic’s side and is limited to search results and URLs you have shared.

Documents and presentations

1. Notes to a proposal. “Turn the notes in Proposal/notes.md into a formatted proposal document: summary, scope, timeline, assumptions. Keep my wording for the scope section.”
2. A deck from a report. “Make a ten-slide presentation from Q3-report.docx for the board: one message per slide, speaker notes with the supporting figures, no more than 30 words on any slide.”

Spreadsheets and data

1. A model with working formulas. “Build a spreadsheet that models monthly cash flow for 12 months from the assumptions in assumptions.txt. Use formulas, not typed numbers, so I can change an assumption and see the effect.” Anthropic lists spreadsheets with working formulas among the things Cowork produces.
2. Clean and summarise an export. “Clean sales-export.csv: fix date formats, remove exact duplicate rows, and list what you changed. Then add a summary tab with totals by region and a chart.”

Email and calendar

1. Inbox triage, drafts only. “Search my Gmail for unanswered emails from clients in the last week. Draft a reply to each and list them for me. Do not send anything.” The Google Workspace connector guide↗ (opens in a new tab) says Claude asks for your approval by default before sending, replying to or forwarding an email.
2. Meeting prep. “For each meeting on my calendar tomorrow, write one paragraph: who is attending, what we last discussed by email, and what I need to bring. Put it in a single document.”

Recurring and scheduled work

1. A weekday morning briefing. Set up in Scheduled with “Create with Claude”: “Every weekday at 8:00, summarise new emails flagged important, today’s meetings, and anything overdue in my task list, as a one-page document.”
2. A weekly report. “Every Monday, read last week’s files in Reports/Weekly and produce a one-page summary of what changed, with the three numbers that moved most.” Anthropic’s page on scheduled tasks↗ (opens in a new tab) says they run remotely even when your computer is asleep, and work with your connectors and the files saved to your Claude account rather than a folder on your computer; the same page also notes that one needing local files or apps runs only locally.
3. A board digest. With a task board connected as a custom connector: “Every Friday, list what moved to Completed this week and what is stuck in In Progress, with the last comment on each, and comment the digest on the weekly review task.”

Where Cowork asks for approval

How often Claude stops is a setting you choose. Anthropic documents three modes: Manually approve, where Claude asks before each action; Automatically approve, where Claude works on and every action is reviewed by a safety check before it runs; and Skip all approvals, with no pauses and no automatic check, for work you trust completely. Automatically approve uses more of your usage limit because of that extra review. On Team and Enterprise plans an admin can turn it off and require approval for write-capable connector tools.

Some stops are there by default. Permanently deleting files needs your explicit permission, and the Gmail and Drive connectors ask by default before sending mail or sharing, moving or trashing files. Anthropic’s advice for using Cowork safely↗ (opens in a new tab) is to switch to asking first whenever a task touches sensitive files, accounts or sites, or does something hard to undo, such as sending messages or making purchases.

Limits worth knowing

• Local means desktop. Connected folders, the browser and computer use work only while the desktop app is open and online.
• Scheduled tasks work with the files saved to your Claude account and cannot be tied to a folder on your computer, although Anthropic also says one that needs local files or apps runs only locally.
• Multi-step tasks use more of your usage limit than quick questions, because every step uses tokens. Group related work and ask for a quick answer when you do not need a file.
• Prompt injection is the main risk. Instructions hidden in a web page, email or document can try to steer Claude. Anthropic’s guidance is to give Cowork a dedicated working folder, keep financial documents, credentials and personal records out of reach, and watch for Claude opening files or sites you never mentioned.
• You remain responsible for what it does on your behalf, including what a scheduled task does while you are away.

Browser-heavy examples have their own permission model and risks; see Claude in Chrome. For ChatGPT’s equivalent, with its own example list, see ChatGPT agent mode.

Keeping a record of what Cowork did

Cowork is at its best on work nobody watches, which is why it helps to have its results land somewhere the team reads. The board digest above is the pattern. Add fenbs through the Claude connector, tick only the scopes the job needs, and have each task read its board task first and comment what it produced when it finishes. Every change appears in the board’s history as “Claude via” the person who connected it, and a person moves the task to Completed after checking the output. If a scheduled task starts doing something you did not intend, revoke its token under Settings and it stops without signing you out.