• Quick entry. Double-tap the Option key (Mac) to pull Claude up over whatever you're working on. It answers in a compact window that stays on top as you switch apps.
• Screenshots and window sharing. Capture a screenshot or share a window so Claude sees what you see. (Mac)
• Dictation. Talk through a problem instead of typing. (Mac)
• Desktop connectors. Connect local tools and services so Claude can work with what's on your machine.

Handing Work Off to Claude

Working agentically with Claude is a new way of working for many people. Instead of asking a question, you hand Claude the whole piece of work — gather the context, do the analysis, produce the finished thing — and it comes back done. You're delegating, not just chatting.

Reach for this when:

• The task has several steps you'd normally do in sequence. Pull the figures, compare them, draft the summary, format the doc. Handed off, that's one instruction, not four errands.
• The output is a real deliverable. A Word doc, a spreadsheet, a deck, a formatted PDF — saved where you need it, not pasted into a chat window for you to reassemble.
• The work spans your tools. Meeting notes in one place, the thread in Slack, last quarter's numbers in a spreadsheet. Set up a Friday roll-up as a scheduled task and Claude gathers all three itself every time it runs — nothing for you to round up first.
• It should happen on a schedule, or while you're doing something else. A Friday review of what shipped. A Monday briefing that preps you for your next meeting.

Handing work off doesn't mean stepping back from it. Before Claude starts, it may ask a few questions to pin down scope and format, and it shows you the plan. As it works, you can watch the task take shape — the sources it's drawing from, the files forming, its progress through the plan — and steer at any point. And when Claude is set to ask before acting, it stops for your approval on the actions that matter, like sending an email or sharing a file. You stay in control of what leaves your desk.

Try it out when:

• You want to query all your tools like a database. "Review what we decided about pricing last quarter across meeting notes, Slack, and email, then update the Q3 deck with the findings." Claude finds the answer across all of them and updates the deck. Hand it off, keep working, check the result.
• You have a folder of 50+ project documents — contracts, financial reports, meeting transcripts. Ask Claude to find the ones most relevant to your initiative and produce a summary memo. It reads every page and pulls out the patterns that only emerge from reading all of them. Review fifty like you'd review five.
• You do the same work every Monday morning — check messages, assemble a status update, prep for the day's meetings. Set it up once as a scheduled task, and start Monday with answers instead of admin.

In the product today. In the desktop app, you can hand off tasks in Cowork. What that gives you today:

• Local folder access. Point Claude at a folder; it reads what's there and saves finished work back to the same place. This is the concrete difference from turn-by-turn Chat, which can read what you upload but hands finished files back as downloads rather than saving them into your folder.
• Scheduled tasks. Set a task once — a daily briefing, a weekly roundup, a morning inbox triage — and Claude runs it on the cadence you set. Scheduled tasks run remotely, so they run even when your computer is asleep or the app is closed. A task that needs files on your computer runs locally, only while the app is open.
• Subagents. For a big job, Claude splits the work across background workers running in parallel, each with its own context, and hands you one finished deliverable.
• Projects. Group related tasks into a workspace with its own files, instructions, and memory — like projects in Chat, but built around the tasks you run.
• Browser use. With Claude in Chrome, Claude navigates websites and pulls what it finds straight into the task — competitor pricing across ten sites, data from pages with no API.
• Computer use. When there's no connector for what you need, Claude can operate your computer directly — clicking, typing, opening apps — asking permission before each app it touches, with a blocklist for anything off-limits. In research preview on Pro and Max plans.
• Plugins. Ready-made bundles of skills, connectors, and agents built for a specific kind of work — a sales plugin, a finance one, a legal one — so Claude works the way that role works. Browse and add them under Customize → Plugins.

Cowork is available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users, with new capabilities added regularly.

Building Software with Claude Code

If you write code, the desktop app gives you a full development environment. Claude works directly in your codebase — reading what's there, writing and modifying code, running commands. Visual diffs show what changed, a built-in terminal shows commands as they run, and git tracks every version so you can always roll back. If you're not a developer, the takeaway is just this: it's a separate tab, and this course doesn't need it — the Claude Code in Action course covers it in depth.

You choose where the work happens:

• Local. Select a folder on your computer and Claude works directly with those files — reading your project, using local tools, and running a development server you can preview in your browser.
• Cloud. Connect a GitHub repository and Claude works in a cloud environment. Sessions continue even if you close the app, so you can start a big refactor and check back later. Good for larger codebases, or when you want to keep the work off your machine.

You also choose how much Claude does on its own, with settings including:

• Manually approve. Claude proposes every change and waits for your approval.
• Accept edits. Claude applies file edits automatically.
• Plan. Claude creates a plan before making changes.

In the product today. This lives in the Code tab of the desktop app, available on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans. You can run multiple sessions across projects and filter them by environment (Local or Cloud) and status from the sidebar.

Choosing the Right Shape for the Task

You won't pick a tab first — you'll notice what kind of work is in front of you, and the tab follows. Here's the whole lesson in one table.

| You're about to… | The shape it takes | Where it lives today | |------------------|-------------------|---------------------| | Ask, brainstorm, draft, or think something through, turn by turn | Working with Claude, turn by turn | Chat (quick entry, dictation, screenshots) | | Hand off a multi-step task that ends in a finished deliverable, spans your tools, or runs on a schedule | Handing work off | Cowork (folder access, connectors, scheduled tasks, subagents) | | Write, test, run, and ship code in a codebase | Building software | The Code tab (Local or Cloud) |

Lesson Reflection

• Think about how you used Claude this week. Which requests were turn-by-turn thinking, and which were really whole tasks you fed in one question at a time because that's the habit?
• Take the task you'd most like off your plate. Is it multi-step, does it end in a real file, does it span your tools? If yes to any, it's a hand-off — write down the outcome you'd describe to Claude, not the first question you'd ask.

What's Next

In the next module, you'll learn how to organize your work and knowledge using projects.