2Setup Done Right
Exercise: build your ClaudeCowork foundation
5 min read909 words
This exercise builds the foundation everything else in the course runs on. Don't skip it. An hour here saves ten hours of re-prompting later.
Step 1—Create your ClaudeCowork folder hierarchy
On your machine, create the following structure. Use Finder, Windows Explorer, or a terminal — whichever you're comfortable with.
~/ClaudeCowork/
├── projects/
│ └── [your-first-project]/
│ ├── context/
│ ├── raw/
│ ├── work/
│ └── out/
├── skills/
└── sandbox/
Replace [your-first-project] with the name of a real project or workflow you want to hand off to Cowork — something you do weekly or monthly that involves files.
Leave the folders empty for now. The structure is what matters.
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Reflection
What did Cowork's first summary of your sandbox get wrong? What did you add to CLAUDE.md to fix it?
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Key Takeaways
- 1The folder hierarchy — raw/, work/, out/, context/ — is the infrastructure that makes every future task reliable and repeatable.
- 2CLAUDE.md is the single most important file you'll build in this course. Specificity in 'what good looks like' and 'what bad looks like' is what separates useful context from generic context.
- 3The refinement loop — run, evaluate, update CLAUDE.md, re-run — is how you calibrate Cowork to your actual work. Expect two or three rounds.
- 4Everything you build in this module compounds: better context files mean better first drafts, fewer re-prompts, and faster task completion across every module that follows.