Most people use AI for questions and answers. I use Claude Cowork to do whole jobs for me. Here are the five I run every week and every month, each with a one-line setup and a prompt you can copy.
Cowork comes with the paid Claude plans (Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise). For the folder jobs, open Cowork in the Claude desktop app and choose Work in a folder in the chat bar. For the morning debrief, connect Gmail and Google Calendar from the + menu in the chat box.
1. Monthly invoicing. Drop your timesheets (photos, PDFs or spreadsheets) into one folder, point Cowork at it and paste this. You get a PDF invoice ready to check and send.
The files in this folder are my timesheets for [month and year]. Add up the hours for each client and project. Then build a PDF invoice with these details: - My business name and address: [details] - Bill to: [client name and address] - Invoice number: [number] - Hourly rate: [rate and currency] - Payment terms: [for example, due in 14 days] - Payment details: [bank or payment link] List each date, task and hours, then the subtotal, any tax at [rate or "no tax"], and the total due. Save it in this folder as [Client]-Invoice-[Month].pdf. Before you finish, show me the hours per day and the total so I can check them. If a timesheet is hard to read, tell me which one and don't guess.
2. Morning debrief. With Gmail and Google Calendar connected, this gives you a short summary of your day before your first coffee.
Check my Google Calendar for today and my Gmail from the last 24 hours. Give me a morning debrief I can read in two minutes: 1. Today's meetings in time order, with who's attending and anything I need to prepare. 2. Emails that need a reply from me today, with one line on what each person wants. 3. Anything urgent or with a deadline this week. 4. The first three things I should do this morning, in order. Skip newsletters, receipts and automated notifications unless they need action. Don't send or delete anything.
3. Transcript to meeting summary. Save your video call transcript into your working folder and ask for the summary, the decisions, the action items and a drafted follow-up email in one go.
Read the transcript [file name] in this folder. It's from my call with [name and company] on [date]. Write me: - A top-line summary in three sentences. - Key decisions we made. - Action items, each with an owner and a due date. If the transcript doesn't say, write "to confirm". - A follow-up email to [name] that thanks them, confirms the decisions and lists the next steps. Keep it warm, plain and under 150 words. Save it all as a Word document in this folder named [Client]-Meeting-[Date].docx.
4. Scheduled research. Set this up once as a weekly scheduled task and Cowork scans your niche, spots trends and hands you the signals. I'm a cat researcher, so mine keeps me up to date on cats.
Search the web for what's been published in the last 7 days about [your niche or industry]. Focus on [topics, competitors or sources you care about]. Give me a short brief: 1. The top 5 signals: new trends, things that are getting a lot of attention, and anything that changed. 2. For each one, a line on why it matters for [your business and audience] and a link to the source. 3. One idea I could act on this week. Only include things you found a source for. Keep the whole brief to one page.
5. Expense tracking from receipts. Snap photos of paper receipts or download your card statements as PDFs, drop them in a folder and let Cowork build the spreadsheet. The subscriptions tab is where I caught the charges I'd forgotten about. The full story of how I found $5,500 is in my SAVE guide.
The files in this folder are my receipts (photos and PDFs) and credit card statements for [period]. Pull every transaction into an Excel spreadsheet with these columns: date, vendor, amount, currency, category, payment method and source file. Use these categories: [for example, software, travel, meals, office, marketing, other]. Add a second tab called Subscriptions that lists every recurring charge with its monthly cost, yearly cost and the date it last charged. Sort it from most to least expensive. If you can't read an amount or a date clearly, leave the cell blank and highlight the row so I can check it. Save the file in this folder as Expenses-[period].xlsx.
Five everyday jobs work well: monthly invoicing from timesheets, a morning debrief of your calendar and email, meeting summaries from call transcripts, weekly research on your niche, and expense tracking from receipts. I run all five in Claude Cowork. Each one starts from a folder of files or a connected app, plus one prompt you reuse every time.
Yes. Put your timesheets in one folder, open Cowork in the Claude desktop app, choose Work in a folder and paste an invoicing prompt with your rate and client details. Claude reads photos and PDFs and can create a PDF invoice. Ask it to show the hours per day before it finishes, and to name any timesheet it couldn't read.
Cowork comes with the paid Claude plans: Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise. Scheduled tasks are on all paid plans too, so once Cowork is set up you can put a job like a weekly research brief on a schedule. For the morning debrief, connect Gmail and Google Calendar from the + menu in the chat box.
No, Claude's Gmail connector sees an attachment's name and can't open the file. The connector can search, read and draft your emails. For receipts that arrive by email, save the attachments into your expenses folder first, then point Cowork at that folder. It can pull them into an Excel spreadsheet with a separate tab for subscriptions.
Yes. In Cowork, click Scheduled in the left sidebar, or type /schedule in any task, and set it to run hourly, daily, weekly, on weekdays or manually. There's no monthly option, so I run invoicing manually on the first of the month. Jobs that read a folder on your computer need the desktop app open and the computer awake.
The exact steps to turn any of these prompts into a Cowork scheduled task, which schedule suits each one, and my "find my next automation" prompt that interviews you about your week and ranks your repetitive tasks.
Not sure what to automate next? Paste this into Cowork. It asks about your week, then ranks what's worth handing over.
Help me find the next task in my work to automate with Claude Cowork. If my Google Calendar is connected, look at my last two weeks first so your questions are specific to me. Then interview me about a typical week, one question at a time. Ask about the tasks I repeat every day, week and month, how long each one takes, which apps and files each one uses, and which ones I put off. Stop after 8 questions. Then give me a table of my repetitive tasks ranked by how much time automating them would save me each month. For each task show: time spent per month, how easy it is to automate with Cowork (using connectors, a folder of files or a scheduled task), and what I'd need to set up. Finish with a ready-to-paste prompt for the number one task and tell me how often to schedule it.
Prompts, step-by-step guides and checklists you can put to work today.