A Look at Agents · Lesson 2 of 3

A tour of Claude Code and Cowork

The chat on claude.ai lives in a browser tab. These two live on your computer, where your actual files are. That changes what they can do for you.

Claude Code: the agent with its hands on your files

Claude Code is Anthropic's agent that runs on your computer. It was built for programmers first, and most of what you'll read about it is code-flavored. But under the hood it's the thing from last lesson: give it a goal, it plans the steps and works through them, reading and writing real files in a folder you point it at.

That matters for you because so much small-business work is folder-shaped. A folder of receipts that should be a spreadsheet. A folder of meeting notes that should be summaries. A pile of photos that should be named and sorted. Chat can't touch those. An agent on your computer can.

Cowork: the same power, without the technical parts

Cowork is the version made for people who don't want a programmer's tool. It runs in the Claude desktop app: you point it at a folder, say what you want done in plain English, and watch it work through the steps. Drafting documents, filling spreadsheets, organizing files, doing research and saving the results.

A real example of what a session looks like: "Here's a folder with 40 photographed receipts. Build me a spreadsheet with date, vendor, and total for each. Leave a blank and flag it if you can't read something." That's workflow 5 from this course, running by itself, on the real pile.

Both tools come with Claude's paid plans, and what's included changes as this stuff evolves quickly. Check claude.com for what's current rather than trusting a course page or a months-old article, including this one. Practice what lesson 4 preached.

Spot your first agent-shaped chore

Here's a rough list of recurring chores in my business that involve files, folders, or piles of paper: {list them, rough is fine}

Which of these could an AI agent working on my computer do end to end, and which still need a person in the loop? For each, say why in one line, and flag anything where a mistake would be expensive.