Cowork Safety FAQ
What this page is.
The honest reference on what Cowork can reach, what it can't, what it'll always pause for, what it just does quietly, and how to stop it when you need to. Phase 3 is where you step up to Cowork; this page is what to consult when something happens that you weren't sure was supposed to happen.
The permission model — Cowork only touches what you gave it.
A lot of the discomfort people feel about "an AI using my computer" goes away when you see the actual fence around it.
What Cowork can see and touch
- Apps you explicitly approved in the Cowork setup (screen access, automation permissions).
- Connectors you turned on (Gmail, Google Calendar). It can read and draft but won't send emails without asking.
- Websites open in your browser while a task is running — but only if you asked it to use the web.
- Nothing on your phone directly — phone messages are how you send tasks in. The actual execution happens on your computer.
What Cowork cannot see or touch
- Any connector you didn't turn on (e.g., if you never connected iMessage or Slack, it can't read those).
- Apps you denied permission to in the operating system.
- Your saved passwords — it won't type them. If a login screen appears, you handle it.
- Any file or folder outside what you showed it in a task. It's not indexing your hard drive.
How to revoke a permission if you change your mind.
Mac: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility / Screen Recording / Automation. Find Claude, uncheck it. Windows: Settings → Privacy & security → the relevant permission category. Revoked immediately. Cowork will fail cleanly next time it needs that capability and tell you what's missing. No drama.
Things Cowork won't do without explicit confirmation.
This is the short list of "serious" actions. Cowork is designed to pause before any of these and show you exactly what's about to happen. You click Approve, or you edit, or you cancel. It will not barrel through them.
Will always pause first
- Sending an email
- Paying for anything / submitting a credit card
- Posting to social media
- Scheduling a meeting with someone outside your household
- Deleting files, emails, or calendar events
- Sending a text message to a real phone number
Will do but tell you after
- Adding a calendar event to your own calendar
- Saving a draft in Gmail
- Adding items to a cart (no checkout)
- Saving a file in a folder you named
- Editing notes in a Project you own
Just does — read-only
- Reading your calendar
- Reading Gmail messages
- Looking up public info on the web
- Summarizing, drafting, planning
The "I trust you, stop asking" option — use carefully.
For recurring tasks like weekly Instacart, you can tell Cowork "you don't have to ask me to add items to the cart anymore, just do the whole cart and I'll check it at the end." That's fine for cart-building. Don't extend that permission to sending emails or paying — that's where the pause is protecting you.
How to watch Cowork work — and why you should, the first 5–10 times.
For your first few Cowork tasks, sit and watch. Not because you're babysitting a toddler — because you're calibrating your trust. You want to see what "normal" looks like: how fast it is, how it narrates, when it pauses, how it phrases its clarifying questions. Once you've seen it run clean three or four times, you'll know at a glance when something's off.
The three signals that everything is fine
- The task panel narrates steadily. "Opening Instacart. Searching strawberries. Adding to cart." One step, one line, moving forward.
- Cowork pauses at the right moments. Before sending, before paying, before anything with someone else's name on it. A well-behaved pause is a green flag, not a failure.
- The result matches what you'd have done yourself. Draft reads like you. Cart is reasonable. Plan is the week you'd have planned. It isn't wildly creative where you didn't want creative.
The three signals that something's off — stop the task
- It's clicking in circles. Opening, closing, re-opening the same page. Usually means a connector is failing or the site changed. Stop, try again, tell it what it was doing.
- It's shopping a different store than you said, or a different account. Rare but possible if your browser was logged into the wrong thing. Stop, fix the login, restart.
- It's producing content that doesn't sound like you. Formal when you're casual, flowery when you're direct. Stop, point it to your voice instructions in the Project (from Voice & Tone Tuning and the custom-instructions lesson), and try again.
Pause, stop, undo — the three buttons every mom should know.
Cowork is designed to be interruptible. You're never locked into watching something play out. Here's exactly how to stop it when you need to.
- Pause mid-task. Look for a pause icon on the Cowork task panel. One click stops activity; Cowork waits quietly. Click resume when you're back.
- Stop a task entirely. The stop or X button (same task panel) ends the task. Anything it already did (drafts saved, items added to cart) stays done — stopping doesn't undo. It just stops the work from continuing. Type or say a correction and start fresh.
- Undo what it did. Cowork itself doesn't have a universal "undo" — you undo in the app where the action happened. Saved a draft you don't want? Delete it in Gmail. Added something to Instacart cart you don't want? Remove it before checkout. Wrong calendar event? Delete it on the calendar. This is the honest limit: Cowork's "undo" is your "delete it where it lives."
- Turn Cowork off entirely. Settings → Cowork → toggle it off. Or quit the desktop app. No tasks can run. This is the "go away for a week" setting — use it on vacation.
The hard stop — if something is actually wrong.
In the worst-case "something is happening I really don't want" scenario: close the Claude desktop app (Cmd-Q on Mac, X then Quit on Windows). Everything stops. No task can continue without the app running. You won't break anything, you won't lose your Projects or chat history. It's a safe emergency brake.
Your Cowork boundaries — one-page reference.
Set these once. Revisit when something changes (a job switch, a teenager with their own email, a new connector you turn on).
The mom's boundaries checklist
- Email: Cowork may draft, never send, without my explicit "yes, send it."
- Money: Cowork may build carts and fill forms, never pay. Checkout is always mine.
- Family members and friends: Cowork won't reply to personal texts or post to social media without showing me the exact draft first.
- Scheduled tasks: I review my active schedules at the start of each month and delete anything I'm not using.
- Sensitive topics: If an email is about medical, legal, or financial details, I'll handle those by hand — Cowork stays out of those threads.
- The cancel-anytime reminder: Month-to-month. Settings → Billing → Cancel. I can always come back.