Where Your Stuff Lives

How your Projects connect to your computer.

Cowork is different from regular Claude in one specific way: it has access to actual files and folders on your computer. Not "you upload a file and it reads it" — Cowork can open files, save files, and organize folders the way you would.

Every Cowork Project you create gets connected to a folder on your computer. Whatever's in that folder, Cowork can read, edit, save, and organize. When you tell Cowork to save a file or create a subfolder, it's writing to the actual filesystem on your laptop.

This is what makes Cowork feel like an agent and not just a smarter chatbot. To use it well, you need to know where things go.

The folder pattern.

Here's the structure we'll use across the whole course:

Inside Documents (the folder you already have on every Mac and Windows computer), you'll have a Claude folder. Inside that, a Projects folder. Inside that, one folder per Cowork Project — Family Manager, Kid Life, Money Command Center, and so on.

You don't have to make any of this yourself. Tell Cowork:

Cowork creates both folders. Done. This is the ask-Claude-first principle in action — you don't go clicking through Finder yourself, you tell Cowork what you want.

Creating a Project.

When you create a new Cowork Project, Claude offers three options. Here's what each one does and when to use it.

1. Start from scratch

   Cowork creates a new folder, sets up instructions, and connects the Project to that folder. This is what the course defaults to. Pick a name (like "Family Manager"), pick where to save it (~/Documents/Claude/Projects/Family Manager/), and click Create.

2. Use an existing folder

   Point Cowork at a folder you already have on your computer. Useful if you've already organized something and want a Project to work with that existing setup.

3. Import from a Claude project

   Pulls files and instructions from a regular (chat-side) Claude Project you already had. You probably won't need this, since we're building everything fresh in Cowork.

Two kinds of files in your Project folder.

Everything in a Project folder is part of what Cowork sees when working in that Project. But it's worth knowing two different roles files end up playing, because that shapes how you organize.

One folder, two kinds of files. Cowork doesn't make you sort them — it just reads whatever's in the folder. The distinction matters for you, not the app: stable reference files at the top, working files in subfolders by topic. Cowork can set up the subfolder structure for you whenever you're ready.

Two habits to start with.

These two habits keep things tidy as your Projects grow. Practice them from your first build forward.

Habit 1 — Tell Cowork to organize subfolders inside a Project.

Some Projects benefit from internal organization. The Kid Life Project, for example, often has one subfolder per kid. You don't make these folders yourself — you tell Cowork:

Cowork creates them. When you want to work on one kid specifically, just say so:

Cowork scopes its reads and writes to that subfolder for the rest of the chat.

Habit 2 — Start a new chat when you change topics.

Each Project has its own conversation history. Within one Project, you can have many chats. Whenever you change topics — finish meal planning and move on to school stuff, finish a brain dump and move on to a calendar question — start a new chat in the same Project.

Why: each chat carries the previous conversation's context. If you keep using one chat for everything, that context gets long, slower, and less focused. Starting fresh every time you change topics keeps each conversation tight, easier to scroll back through later, and faster.

There's no command for this — just look for the "New chat" button or the pencil-and-paper icon in your Project. Cowork won't automatically start a new chat for you; this is a habit on your end.