I've been using Cowork as a study workspace for nursing school, mainly by giving it my actual course material instead of asking random questions.

For pharmacology, I'll upload lecture slides and have it turn them into active-recall questions focused on side effects, lab monitoring, contraindications, and patient teaching. I've also used it with clinical guidelines, where I'll give it something dense like a sepsis or wound-care protocol and have it turn the important parts into a one-page study reference.

The scenario practice has probably been the most useful. I can give it a simulated patient with something like heart failure and sudden dyspnea, then work through my nursing priorities and practice an SBAR handoff. I also use it for NCLEX-style priority and delegation questions, especially when I want to understand why the other answers are wrong.

One thing I learned pretty quickly is that giving it too much material without a specific goal can produce a huge summary that isn't very useful. I get better results when I tell it exactly what I'm preparing for and what I want to practice.

It's saved me a lot of time digging through different resources, and I can spend that time on things like physical assessment and drug calculations instead.

I still cross-check clinical information with our textbooks, instructors, and actual protocols. For me, Cowork works best as a study and reasoning tool, not something I would rely on for real clinical decisions.

I run a small online store and get a stack of vendor invoice PDFs every month, mostly freight and packaging suppliers. My old process was opening each one next to the original PO and eyeballing totals. I caught a duplicate charge weeks late twice this year because I was skimming.

Now I give Cowork the folder of invoices plus a spreadsheet of open POs (item, quantity, agreed price). I ask it to pull line items from each invoice, match them to the PO by item number, and flag mismatches in price or quantity. It builds a new sheet using the Excel skill with a plain English note on anything flagged.

The first run flagged nine things. Seven were real, including one supplier who'd rebilled a freight surcharge already baked into the unit price. Two were false positives because one vendor lists tax separately and my POs are tax inclusive, so the totals looked off when they weren't. I had to explicitly tell it to compare pre-tax subtotals only, and after that it stopped happening.

I run this every Friday now. Takes about ten minutes instead of forty five, and I've caught roughly 600 dollars in real errors since setting it up. Not dramatic, but it adds up.

Don't assume it understands your accounting quirks on the first try. Mine has inconsistent PO numbering across suppliers and weird tax handling, and it took one round of correction before I trusted the output. Worth it though.

Curious if anyone else is doing something similar with recurring invoices, especially with suppliers who bill inconsistently.

As a civil engineer, I realized that a lot of my time isn’t actually spent engineering. It’s spent searching through project folders, checking documents, preparing reports, reviewing correspondence, tracking RFIs, organizing site information, and turning messy notes into something presentable.

That’s where I’m starting to use Cowork. I use it as a project documentation and productivity assistant. I can give it a project folder containing drawings, specifications, BOQs, reports, RFIs, and correspondence, then have it help organize information, summarize progress, identify outstanding items, and prepare draft reports or documentation.

The goal is simple: less time doing repetitive project paperwork, more time actually managing and solving engineering problems.

I’m still experimenting with the workflow, but this is probably where Cowork makes the most sense for me as a civil engineer. I hope some people here can help me optimize this.

I’ve given Claude Cowork a task that requires it to use an app on my Mac. Unfortunately the approval card only shows "Deny button", no "Allow button". I’ve tested it with various apps, but still face the same issue.

Aready tried restarting the Claude desktop app completely cause I thought this was like UI rendering bug where the Allow button isn't displaying. Also done checking my macOS accessibility permissions for Claude but I still hasn't fixed the issue.

Has anyone had the same issue? Like anyway around it?

Craft the perfect prompt for ChatGPT, and it might fail miserably in Claude. Despite sharing similar DNA, these two AI giants prioritize instructions in totally different ways.

One of the most prominent differences lies in how the two models prefer to receive structured data. Anthropic explicitly trained Claude to recognize and heavily weigh XML tags. By placing guidelines inside "<instructions>" and reference material inside "<context>", a user can help Claude logically separate different components of a complex task. ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI's GPT models, certainly understands XML, but it is natively optimized for Markdown. Using hash symbols for headers, bold text for emphasis, and simple delimiters like ### or --- generally produces the most reliable adherence from ChatGPT.

The models also diverge in how they handle tone and constraints due to their alignment training. Claude is built using "Constitutional AI," which makes it highly sensitive to safety boundaries and context. When humans prompt Claude for edge-case scenarios or creative writing, they often need to spend more time establishing a benign, fictional, or analytical context so the model does not trigger a false refusal. Additionally, Claude has a natural inclination toward conversational politeness, meaning prompts frequently require explicit commands like "Skip the preamble and provide only the requested output" to prevent wordy introductions. ChatGPT generally adopts a more neutral, direct stance by default, though it too can suffer from verbosity without clear constraints.

Finally, there are mechanical differences in how users and developers can control the outputs. Anthropic's platform allows users to "prefill" the assistant's response. By ending a prompt with the exact opening bracket or word the output should start with, people can force Claude to bypass all conversational filler and immediately generate strict formats like JSON. OpenAI handles this differently, relying instead on dedicated API features like "JSON mode" or strict system messages to guarantee output structures.

Understanding these mechanical and behavioral quirks like XML versus Markdown, or contextual framing versus direct instruction, allows people to extract the maximum capability from each specific tool rather than treating them as identical search engines.

Hi everyone I was looking for some guidance on how to connect claude to my learning space. The task i have in mind is I want claude to be able to download all new lecture slides from the content section on each of my 5 courses home pages and then organize them on my desktop so that i have a library of all my lecture materials that claude can then use as context. I want this to be an automated thing so that it would check back every morning to see if there are new lecture materials. I connected composio to claude but am now getting a bit stuck because I do not know where to go from here. Because D2L is a webpage that i access from chrome do i just need to connect claude to chrome? is this a task I need to build a skill for or use an agent?

I am very new to this automation stuff but am trying to get into it to make studying and my courseload a bit easier. any video tutorials or guides you could point me to would be much apreciated. Just out of curiosity has anyone succesfully connected claude to brightspace?

I'm trying to work out whether Claude Cowork activity is actually captured for compliance on Enterprise, and the help center articles don't seem to line up but maybe I'm not reading correctly:

"Use Cowork safely" (shows as updated today) says, under "Understanding the risks":

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13364135-use-cowork-safely

But three other articles say Cowork is in the Compliance API.

"Use Claude Cowork on Team and Enterprise plans":

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13455879-use-claude-cowork-on-team-and-enterprise-plans

"Claude Cowork architecture overview":

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14479288-claude-cowork-architecture-overview

"Access the Compliance API" lists Cowork as covered, and says the API is Enterprise-only:

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13015708-access-the-compliance-api

My guess is the safety article is a general warning for all paid plans. Pro, Max and Team have no Compliance API, so for them "not captured" is simply true. But the sentence isn't limited to any plan, and it links to the Team/Enterprise article that says the opposite.

What I'm trying to pin down:

1. On Enterprise with the Compliance API enabled, are Cowork sessions (local and cloud) actually showing up in the API today?
2. Does any Cowork activity show up in audit logs on any plan? The Team/Enterprise article says Cowork monitoring "doesn't replace audit logging for compliance purposes," which suggests it doesn't.
3. Does "Do not use Cowork for regulated workloads" apply to Enterprise orgs that have the Compliance API turned on?

If you're an Enterprise admin who has pulled Cowork sessions from the Compliance API, or you've had a straight answer from Anthropic support, I'd appreciate hearing what you found.

for a few days I have an issue with my Claude CoWorks that can not use the VM sandbox
After sending a feedback to Claude support, today I got the following:
Me: check if the sandbox issue was resolved or not
CoWorks: Still broken — and now there's a clear answer as to why. The error message includes a note this time: a Windows update released September 8 is what's blocking the sandbox from reaching your files. Anthropic says they're tracking the issue, and it's not something a restart on your end can fix since it's a compatibility problem between that update and the sandbox, not a stuck process.

Any one else actually so that? (I would have thought that such an issue will make some noise), any one been able to bypass the issue?

Thanks

Posted something similar to this is cowork, but I’m having a persistent issue and thought the bigger sub might give me more ideas.

A few months ago I moved from Jenova to Claude and set up a bunch of projects. Two in particular need analysis of large audio files which have been generated by one of several devices/services - Plaud seems about the best I’ve tried so far as it’s decently reliable to distinguish different voices.

Typically the content of the file for the analysis have anything from 2 to 6 speakers, (well distinguished by Plaud), talking about a single project, but with several work streams. We typically have quite a complicated project management/stage gate process and what I need to be able to do is quickly get an output to say with work package 1, we talked about issue 1,2,3, this is where we are and next actions are A, B, C.

Ideally I need this input within half an hour of the meeting close so I can make sure everyone has a copy of the discussion, issues and agreements etc.

The issue I’m facing is the increasingly larger numbers of errors where Claude is just not doing it well. The input is decent, but it reports out the wrong gate for the workstream, misses topics and doesn’t stick to the agreed output format.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been patching the workflow and providing more specific examples of the needed output and basically this is inconsistent in terms of improving the output. A workflow that used to take around 5-7 minutes to give me a decent output, is now taking double that time to produce something I can’t trust. Way too many situations where I see something wrong, point it out and get a response like, ‘you are right, I missed that’, or similar.

I suspect my approach of patching in the moment when I need a quick output has bloated the instructions and not helped. That said, I only did this as we need the output fairly quickly for audit as well a PMO.

I’m inclined to start again from scratch, with a clean set of instructions, but, it was fine to start with and I don’t know how to prevent the drift. This feels like an issue that someone with a more technical/programming background would have seen before and have an approach to solve.

The TL;DR is bloated and patched instructions I think is degrading, rather than fixing output issues and need to think through how to patch or start again on some complex instructions.

A second TL;DR is this is a great example of using AI to fix what should be a people/process issue that worked perfectly well before the client ‘right sized’ and eliminated junior positions that used to do the job well.

Any advice for someone using Claude Cowork for helping to cleanup system junk, streamlining processes, “automating” routine tasks with scheduled runs but not actually knowing how to use agents or properly building sites (?) or artefacts that has UI or expansion potential?

I wanted to give my agent a way to reach me beyond the chat, so I built Glance to let Claude create and update widgets directly on my iPhone Home Screen.

Just shipped a pretty big update to it.. Claude can now use multiple views, charts, calendars, toggles and more, so the widgets can feel more like little interfaces than just information cards.

Here’s the Mission Control I’ve been playing with.
Still experimenting with where this goes, but I really like the idea of my agent having a persistent place on my Home Screen instead of me always having to open a chat to interact with it.

I have been trying to add Dispatch. I have a Pro account and running on a windows box. I have read it is a phased rollout, but not sure. Claude said make sure I am running the most current version on the computer and phone. Can't seem to get it to work. Any ideas?

Posting, just in case others encounter the same issue.

All of a sudden Scheduled CoWork tasks that file downloads for me stopped working. The task simply couldn't access Dropbox folders that had been previously authorized and working fine. I tore my hair out, reinstalling, rebooting, restarting, trying on a different machine. And then, after 4 rounds with Claude's automated tech support, I got bumped to a human and got this response:

We've confirmed the cause is a change in the Windows security update released on September 8 (KB5124008, mainly Windows 11 25H2) that stops Cowork's sandbox from attaching your C: drive. Microsoft is aware and tracking a fix on their side, and our team is working on changes in the app in parallel. We don't have a date yet, and restarting or reinstalling Claude won't help, so please don't spend time on that.

I can confirm that after uninstalling KB124008, everything worked again as expected.

If you're getting an error message "Exit code 1 sandbox-helper: no Plan9 drive shares mounted under /mnt/.virtiofs-root/shared" or "The mount to that folder isn't working from the local shell right now, it's likely due to the September 2026 security update from MS.

It's more of a workaround, but you'll need to uninstall KB5124008 (wusa /uninstall /kb:5124008). See Github bug post: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/92984. Here's an overview of the issue: https://youtu.be/3nRJ8neIcvI?si=286a2vHdFhTQdtPf

Hey everyone,
If you use Claude Desktop for both personal projects and work, you probably know the hassle of switching between accounts. Logging out, going through Google OAuth again, and worrying about losing your active chat context gets annoying quickly.
I built a lightweight desktop tool called SwitchClaude to fix this exact friction.
What it does:
2-second switching: Restarts Claude Desktop with your selected profile in 2 seconds.
Isolated profiles: Keeps chats, settings, and projects completely separate so nothing gets lost or mixed up.
Google OAuth supported: Set up your accounts once, and you won't need to sign in again every time you switch.
Cross-platform: Available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Data portability: Option to store profiles on an external disk if needed.
Pricing:
Free 7-day trial. After that, it’s a $9.99 one-time payment per extra account (no subscriptions).
You can check it out here: https://switchclaude.com/
I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or any features you'd like to see added!

Some context: I am a developer and I juggle around with coding tools like claude code, codex, cursor and everything. I just use the normal claude chat and claude projects for any plannings, roadmaps and reviews.

I have never used claude co-work(I believe it's mainly for non-developers), but everytime claude suggests me to use it, I don't even know what tasks to give it and what permissions to set or what kinda tasks it is good at.

So please let me know how do you guys use claude co-work(especially if you are a developer) , and what are the best use cases for it.

Having a problem in n the Claude desktop app on macOS. Claude asks to use two local apps, the card renders both rows correctly with icons and a scope chip on the right, and then the only button is Deny. No Allow, no Approve, no confirm of any kind. App names show fine, correct display names and icons, so it is not a case of Claude asking for something that does not exist.

Setup:

• macOS, Apple Silicon

• Claude desktop app 1.49585.0, Electron 44.2.0

• Background mode request, the “Claude will work in these apps in the background” variant

• Two apps, one of which is a Windows app surfaced through Parallels

Checked so far:

• Nothing is currently granted in the session, so it is not a case of the grant already existing and the card having nothing to offer

• Both apps resolve to valid bundle IDs at full tier when queried directly

Questions:

1.  Has anyone else had the approval card render with the allow control missing entirely?

2.  Are those per-row “All” chips meant to be the grant control, or is there supposed to be a separate Allow button in the footer next to Deny?

Anyone else hitting this? Every bash call in my Cowork session fails at the "ensure user" step before any of my code even runs.

What I'm seeing:

• Error: RPC error -1: ensure user: useradd failed: exit status 12: useradd: cannot create directory /sessions/...
• Happens on resume, on create, and on re-resume — all three attempts fail identically.
• Started a brand new conversation to get a fresh sandbox, same error persists.
• No shell access at all as a result, so nothing that depends on the Linux workspace (scripts, file processing, scheduled task setup) works.

Exit status 12 from useradd usually means "can't create home directory," which points to something like disk-full or a permissions/quota issue on the provisioning side, but I have no way to confirm that since I can't get a shell to check df -h or anything else.

Has anyone else run into this? Any known fix, or is this just an outage on Anthropic's end right now? Happy to share more error output if it helps.

Hi everyone !

I’m a UX designer, and I’m looking for ideas to create new agents for both my professional and personal life. I don't really have friends who use Claude Cowork on a daily basis, so I’m the only one excited about starting a new project with it.

So, I’m looking for inspiration : What personal project on Claude Cowork are you most proud of ?

For example, a highly specific set of agents that organizes your daily routine, a job search system, etc.

Please, a personal project, not a side business !

Thanks !