Cowork Mondays Week 2: Teach Claude Who You Are
The difference between a generic AI and one that actually knows your business.
Welcome to Week 2!
If you made it through Week 1, you’ve got Claude Cowork installed, your folder connected, and you’ve watched an AI create actual files on your computer. That first moment never gets old.
This week, we’re solving the biggest frustration most people hit in their first few days: Claude doesn’t know who you are. It doesn’t know your name, your business, how you communicate, or who you mean by “email Ryan.” Right now, it’s a brilliant assistant with zero context. This week, we fix that.
Below is this week’s video: nine minutes that take you from a generic out-of-the-box Claude to one that actually responds as it knows you.
The moment to watch for: at the start of the video, I ask Claude to draft a quick email declining a vendor proposal. Take a look at what it produces. Then at the end, after you’ve run through this week’s setup, run the same prompt again. The difference is the whole point.
Week 2, step by step:
1. Open Cowork. Type: “Draft a quick email politely declining a vendor proposal.” Read what comes back. It’ll be fine. It’ll also sound like a generic LinkedIn post. That’s your baseline.
2. Build your Personal Preferences doc. Two ways to do this. Pick one.
Option A (recommended): Let Claude interview you. In your Cowork chat, paste this prompt:
> “You are an interviewer helping me build a Personal Preferences document for Claude. Ask me one question at a time. Wait for my answer before moving on. Don’t bundle questions. Cover these areas in order: name and title; my company or companies; the people in my life (spouse, kids, key colleagues by name); my daily role and focus; my communication style (length, formatting, tone); words and phrases I can’t stand; punctuation rules (em dashes, emojis, bullet points); personal goals or values that should shape your advice; how I want you to respond when I’m wrong or making excuses; anything else important about me. After all questions are answered, save the result as a file called ‘Personal Preferences.md’ in this folder. The first section of this document should contain the information I can use to populate my Settings → General → Claude Profile → Instructions for Claude. The second section should contain the information I can use to populate my Settings → Cowork → Global instructions. Use clear subsection headers. Don’t editorialize. Just structure my answers. Ask me question 1.”
Answer the questions one at a time. When the interview wraps, Claude saves the finished doc into your Cowork folder.
Option B (DIY): Write it yourself. Open a blank Google Doc. Write down your name and role, your people, your communication style, the words and phrases you can’t stand, and how you want Claude to respond to you. Save it as “Personal Preferences” in your Cowork folder.
3. Install it in two places so Claude uses it automatically:
- Claude account settings (Settings → General → Claude Profile → Instructions for Claude): paste in the first section of the Personal Preferences.md document Claude creates for you. Applies across every Claude product you use.
- Cowork Global Instructions (Settings → Cowork → Global instructions): paste in the second section of the Personal Preferences.md document Claude creates for you. Loads automatically every time Cowork fires up.
4. Restart Cowork.
5. Type the exact same question from step 1: “Draft a quick email politely declining a vendor proposal.”
6. Compare the two responses side by side. The first one is who Claude is to everyone. The second one is who Claude is to you.
How we used Cowork at our office this week: A few of us are working hard to build our Standard Operating Procedures at kitchen & bath CRATE and TBS. We’ve discovered a way to do this quickly and accurately: use Loom to record our screen as we narrate while performing a task, then feed the video transcript into Claude and ask it to turn the transcript into an SOP. Then insert the how-to video from Loom into the SOP, giving the user two ways to learn a task, depending on how they learn best. (Watching vs. reading.) Works like a charm!
What I’m expecting from you this week: Don’t overthink the interview portion of today’s step-by-step. Answer the questions honestly and don’t try to be perfect. You can go back and update your preferences anytime (and you should!). This is version 1.0, not the final draft. The goal this week is to get something in there. Anything is better than nothing.
This week’s homework, in one line: Run the interview prompt, load your preferences into Claude’s settings, restart, and run the vendor email test again. Reply and tell me if the result changed.
See you next Monday for Week 3: connecting Claude to your email, calendar, and file storage platforms.
Quick note on the format. My complete Claude Cowork playbook (Weeks 1-6) is free, public, and yours. Here’s the link. Read the playbook at your own pace. The reason to subscribe (free, just a few clicks) is so that these Monday cohort emails land in your inbox over the next five weeks. Enjoy!
When you hear the story of why Toys R Us failed, you’ll agree: not even Claude Cowork could have saved it! This week’s Whatever Happened To… video is here, and it’s rather nostalgic for us 70s, 80s, and 90s kids…
