You are doing things a robot could do. Formatting documents, comparing suppliers, reading through months of transcripts, booking venues, organizing data. You could do so much more. And the founders who learn these tools now will have an unfair advantage over everyone who doesn’t.

Allie K. Miller is one of the 100 most influential people in AI, according to Time Magazine, and the most followed voice in AI for business with nearly 2 million followers. Previously Amazon Web Services’ global head of machine learning for startups and venture capital, Miller founded the AI startup department and grew it into a multi-billion dollar business line. She now advises Fortune 500 companies including Novartis, Samsung, Salesforce, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. In a video walkthrough last month, Miller demonstrated Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s new AI agent tool, and showed exactly how founders can use it to hand off entire chunks of work to AI. Although AI moves quickly, this will give you the fundamentals.

Claude Cowork lives inside the Claude desktop app. It can access your files, open your web browser, create documents, build dashboards, and run multiple tasks at the same time without you watching. You queue up work across different threads, walk away from your computer, and come back to finished outputs. Miller described the ability to run tasks in parallel as “a freaking superpower.”

I wrote about Miller in 2024 when she shared 10 ways to get started in AI. Claude Cowork takes those principles from theory into practice. You’re undervaluing yourself if you’re still doing things manually that AI can now handle on its own. Here’s what it can do, how to set it up, and how to get the most from it.

What Claude Cowork can do in your business

Analyze entire folders of documents

Miller pointed Claude at 321 podcast transcripts and asked it to categorize every guest by job title, rank their AI sentiment from cautious to very bullish, and pull featured quotes from each person. Claude read through the files, organized the data, and created an interactive, filterable dashboard; something that standard LLMs just can’t do.

The same approach works for your customer call transcripts, survey responses, support tickets, competitor research, proposals, or quarterly reports. Maybe you’re sitting on a year of client feedback you’ve never had time to read. Any folder that would take you days to review becomes a task you can start doing in minutes.

Research, compare and book things

In a separate thread, Miller asked Claude to find podcast studios in Manhattan, compare them, create a spreadsheet of options, and begin filling out the booking form for the best one. Claude opened a browser, navigated to the booking page, and filled in the fields. Miller just reviewed the details and hit submit.

This works for supplier comparisons, software evaluations, venue scouting, event registration, or market research on a new category you want to enter. You make the decision. Claude does the legwork just like your VA would.

Build interactive dashboards and reports

Claude created a filterable dashboard with guest categories, sentiment scores, job titles, and sample quotes Miller could shuffle through. The output was an interactive JSX file she could share via link with her team. Miller explained that you “take the code that Claude Cowork generates and port it into normal Claude chat to turn it into an HTML artifact that can be shared publicly. That version would be hosted by Claude, but if you’re doing it from within Claude Cowork, then you have to deploy it with an app like Vercel.”

This is how you take a problem your dream customer has and create a fast, simple, AI-based solution. An app, in Claude Cowork, that you have options on how to share.

However you choose to deploy, you can share dashboards, reports, and prototypes. Maybe you need a client overview dashboard built from the data already on your laptop. Claude can have it ready before your next meeting.

Run multiple projects at the same time

Open as many threads in Cowork as you need. One thread analyzes last quarter’s data. Another researches a new market. A third builds a presentation. Each one progresses independently while you focus on thinking bigger about your business. Within each thread you can also stack follow-up instructions.

Miller added extra prompts to specify the output she wanted while Claude was still working through the original request. She said, “I can walk away from my computer for hours while all of these threads are managing all of these stacked up tasks.” Queue the work. Leave. Come back to results.

Hand off outputs to your team

Download any app or program Claude creates and take it further. Miller explained you can move files into VS Code, hand them to an engineer, or connect them to Vercel for deployment. The prototype Claude builds in minutes becomes the starting point for a finished product.

Every function you personally handle that a robot could do is a leak in your freedom. Let Claude build the first version based on your strategic input, then have your team finish it.

How to set up Claude Cowork step by step

Download and open the app

Search “download Claude desktop app” in any browser. Install it and sign in. Claude Cowork is currently available on the Pro plan. Once inside, you’ll see three tabs at the top of the screen. Chat, Claude Code, and Cowork. Select Cowork.

Miller recommends always choosing the most capable model, saying “I always start with Opus 4.6. If for whatever reason you’re just antsy and you need a response immediately, only then would I drop it down.” The whole setup takes less than two minutes.

Point it at a folder and give permissions

Use the folder icon to point Claude at a specific folder on your computer. Then that’s what it uses in its task. This could be client files, sales transcripts, content libraries, or financial records. You can let it access one folder at a time, or point it at your main desktop or documents folder to access all files there.

When Claude asks for permission, click “allow” for one-time access or “always allow” to let it run freely. Miller clicked “always allow” for her podcast transcripts because she could always re-download them. Pick the folder that houses a process or task that eats up most of your time and start there.

Write a detailed prompt

The quality of what you get back depends on the quality of what you ask for. In this example, Miller dictated a detailed request asking for “the types of people interviewed and their speaking style” and specified that sample quotes should be “powerful high-density phrases that help me learn something in AI leadership or product building.”

Tell Claude what you want to create, what to look for in the information you’ve given it, what format you want the output in, and how interactive the output should be. Maybe you’re the founder who needs six months of sales call transcripts sorted by objection type with the best responses highlighted. Give Claude that level of detail. The more specific your prompt, the less editing you do later.

Make Claude Cowork perform at its best

Track progress and intervene early

Claude creates its own to-do list in the progress panel on the right side of the screen. You can watch it check items off and see which step it’s on. You can also comment on individual tasks before Claude reaches them. Miller recommended you “jump in and correct it before it gets to that step” so you don’t waste time and tokens on outputs heading in the wrong direction. She was thinking about how to “save tokens” and “make sure that I’m getting the best or most use out of Claude before it cuts me off.”

If step four looks wrong, correct it before Claude gets there. Think of it as managing a fast new team member who shows you the plan before executing.

Correct and refine your outputs

Miller’s run analyzed 40 of 320 transcripts even though it planned to do all of them. She explained you go back and tell Claude to do the rest. She also warned that “that last mile of making things can sometimes take as much as the first half of a project.”

Her team ran a five-hour hackathon and she told everyone at the halfway point that the refinement phase would take just as long. Allocate time for editing. Grill Claude. Be specific about what’s missing. Claude keeps going as long as you keep directing it.

Know the current limitations

Claude Cowork can only access one folder at a time, but the folder you select could have other folders within it. There are also built-in plugins available, with features like legal wording and the front-end design plugin that improves visual quality.

Whatever you can’t do with Cowork now, know that it’s only going to get more advanced from here. The tool was built in a week and a half, Miller noted, and updates are coming fast. Any limitations are temporary. Your decision to start using AI is permanent.

Put Claude Cowork to use in your business today

You need to learn AI. The tools are here and they work. Download the Claude desktop app, point it at the folder that takes up most of your time, and give it a detailed prompt describing exactly what you need. Queue up your tasks across multiple threads and let Claude handle the work while you handle the growth.

Stop doing things a robot could do. The version of your business where AI runs the busywork is available right now.

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