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The Calum Johnson Show
Claude Cowork Expert: The BEST Way To Use Claude In Your Business, Content & Life (For Non Techies!)
⏱ 66 min video · 3 min read22 Jun 2026Worth watching
TL;DR
Non-technical AI educator Brock walks through exactly how to set up and use Claude CoWork (Anthropic's desktop agent) to automate business workflows, create content, and build a personal operating system — no coding required. The video covers the full setup sequence from workspace and Claude MD files to skills, projects, connectors, and scheduled tasks.
Key points
1
Claude CoWork (desktop app) gives non-technical users ~90% of the power of Claude Code without needing a terminal or IDE — start here before attempting Claude Code
2
The Claude MD file is the brain of your CoWork system: a markdown file that tells Claude who you are, your goals, and your rules — it must be set up first and pruned regularly over time
3
Skills are pre-built reusable workflows triggered by short commands (e.g. '/IG carousel' or 'PDF guide') that always produce consistent, styled outputs — Brock has over 100 of them
4
Scheduled tasks let skills run automatically on a timer (e.g. morning briefing at 7am) pulling from connected apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Stripe, QuickBooks, and Canva
5
Live Artifacts are real-time dashboards inside CoWork that pull data from connected apps automatically — Brock uses one as a unified business OS showing top 3 daily priorities, revenue vs goals, emails, and calendar
Actionable insights
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Start by downloading the Claude desktop app and creating a local workspace folder, then generate your Claude MD file by giving Claude a brain dump about yourself and your business — refine it over time by asking Claude to audit and prune it based on recent conversations
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Build skills by first showing Claude an example of the output you want (e.g. a screenshot of a design you like), then have it codify those instructions into a reusable skill — do not skip showing it what good looks like before saving the skill
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Connect Google tools (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive) first as they are the most universally useful, then add QuickBooks or Canva depending on your business — use 'needs approval' permissions initially and switch to 'always allow' only once you trust the workflow
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Set up scheduled tasks only after your skills are refined — chain multiple skills together in one scheduled task (e.g. scrape email + scrape calendar + generate briefing dashboard) for consistent, automated daily outputs
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Use the Zapier MCP as a workaround to connect any app not natively listed in CoWork connectors — search for your app inside Zapier MCP, connect with your API key, then tell CoWork it is connected through Zapier
Notable quotes
“Claude CoWork gets you like 90% of the way that Code does and it is much simpler to use for non-technical people.”
“If you are like me, when I was getting started, you hear the word terminal or IDE and you are like, what the hell even is that?”
“You being non-technical is kind of your superpower. You are able to connect with people and understand the actual things people are going through.”
Worth watching?
✅
Worth watching the full video?
Watch if you want the live screen-share walkthrough of setting up CoWork step by step — the structured sequence (MD file, projects, skills, connectors, scheduled tasks) is genuinely hard to find explained this clearly for non-technical users.
Saved you some time? The creator still deserves a like.
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