Get Started with Claude CoWork in Under 6 Minutes

Claude CoWork is built for tasks that run on their own for a while, over your own files and inbox, and hand back a finished result — not a back-and-forth conversation.

What you need

• Claude CoWork access to run a task, not a regular chat
• Inbox access connected so Claude can read the last month of email —
• A folder somewhere Claude can save the output file —

Steps

1. Open Claude CoWork and connect your inbox

   Grant it access to the inbox you want scanned. This is a one-time step per inbox — CoWork needs to actually read the messages, not just their subject lines.

2. Point it at a folder for the output

   Give it access to a folder it can write into. The task below saves a real file there — that's the whole point of running it as a CoWork task instead of a chat.

3. Write the task

   This task scans the inbox for anything tied to money and sorts it into what needs action versus what doesn't — the kind of triage that's tedious to do by hand but simple to describe.

   1 · inbox-money-flags.txt Claude CoWork → new task Copy

   Go through my inbox from the last 1 month and flag anything tied to money —
   bills, invoices, and paid subscriptions. Sort into two lists:
   1. Due or unpaid — needs action
   2. Already auto-charged or just a renewal/expiration notice — no action needed
   
   For each item, include the sender/vendor, amount (if visible), and date.
   
   Save the results as a Markdown file named "todo-flags-[today's date].md" in
   the folder you have access to for this task. Don't just summarize in chat —
   write the actual file.

4. Adjust it to fit, if you want

   The task above is a starting point — change the timeframe or the file format to whatever's actually useful to you.

   You can swap the output file to a plain .txt instead of .md, and shrink the window from 1 month to something like 1 week for a faster run while you're testing it out.

---

Next demo