The non-developer's guide to Claude Cowork. 10 things to set up before you do anything else.

Claude just hit #1 in the App Store. Millions of people downloaded it after Anthropic told the Pentagon "no" to mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. If you're one of them, you just got handed something way more powerful than a chatbot. Cowork is the feature inside Claude's desktop app that actually does work for you. Not "generates text" work. Real work. It checks your email, reviews your calendar, drafts your documents, and connects to Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion, and 30+ other tools. While you do other things. I've been building with Claude Code for months, and I set up Cowork configurations for non-technical business owners as part of my consulting work. Most people set it up wrong because they skip the first 30 minutes of configuration. This guide fixes that. In under 10 minutes you'll learn: How to transfer everything you've taught ChatGPT into Claude (without starting over) The global instructions that make every Cowork response actually useful Why plan mode saves you from Claude going rogue on your files The folder structure that turns Cowork from a chatbot into a second employee How plugins, skills, and connectors work together (and which ones to install first) The scheduled task that gives you a daily briefing before you even sit down Follow @NickSpisak_ for practitioner-level AI implementation and Claude Code architecture content. If you're non-technical and want help setting this up, join our Build With AI community waitlist: http://return-my-time.kit.com/1bd2720397 1. Transfer Your Memories from ChatGPT (2 minutes) If you've been using ChatGPT or Gemini, you've spent months teaching it who you are, what you do, and how you like things done. You don't have to start over. Claude has a built-in memory import tool. Go to Settings, then Capabilities, and click "Start import from other AI providers." It gives you a prompt to copy. Paste that prompt into ChatGPT. It dumps all its stored memories about you into a single text block. Copy that block, paste it into Claude, done. Now Claude knows everything ChatGPT knew about you. Your preferences, your business, your communication style. In about 60 seconds. 2. Set Up Your Global Instructions (5 minutes) This is the single most important step that most people skip. Global instructions are rules that Claude follows on every single message you send in Cowork. Without them, Claude guesses how you want things done. With them, it already knows. Go to Settings, then the Cowork tab, and click "Edit" on Global Instructions. Write plain English rules about who you are and how you work. Things like: your name, what you do, your preferred output format, how you like to communicate, and safety boundaries (never delete files without asking, never modify folders you didn't point to). Here's what I tell every client: spend 5 minutes on this now or spend 5 minutes correcting Claude on every single task later. The math is obvious. 3. Always Use Plan Mode This one trips up everyone who's used to ChatGPT. With a regular chatbot, you type something and it just starts going. Cowork can do that too, but you shouldn't let it. Plan mode tells Claude to stop, think, and show you a step-by-step plan before it does anything. You review the plan, approve it, and then Claude executes. This matters because Cowork has real access to your computer and your tools. You want to see what it's about to do before it does it. Add this to your global instructions: "Always show a plan. Wait for my approval. Then execute." Three sentences that prevent Claude from reorganizing your entire desktop without asking. I've seen people skip this step and end up with Claude rewriting files it shouldn't have touched. Plan mode is your safety net and your quality control in one. 4. Build Your Folder Structure When you start a Cowork task, it asks you to select a folder. This folder is Claude's workspace. Whatever you put in it, Claude can read and use. Create a main workspace folder (something like "My-Cowork-Workspace") with these subfolders inside it: context/ (files that tell Claude who you are) current-projects/ (what you're working on right now) successful-examples/ (your best work, so Claude knows what good looks like) Inside the context folder, create three plain text files: about-me.md, brand-voice.md, and working-preferences.md. You don't need to write these yourself. Go into Cowork, point it to your context folder, and say: "Create these three files. Interview me so you can fill them out." Claude will ask you questions and build them for you. This is where most people stop. But there's one more folder that changes everything. That "successful-examples" folder. Put your best emails in there. Your best LinkedIn posts. Your best proposals. Whatever content you produce regularly, give Claude examples of the ones that worked. Now it's not guessing your style. It's reverse-engineering your actual wins. 5. Install Plugins (Your First Three) Plugins are pre-built instruction sets that give