Module 1 · Claude Cowork Fundamentals
Read, synthesize, and compare documents
The office work that eats up most of your time
Reading and summarizing documents is where Claude Cowork saves you whole hours right away. Let's look at the three basic operations and how to ask for them well.
First, the files need to be where it can see them: drop the documents into your working folder (lesson 1.3). When an example below names a file like lease-contract.pdf or a candidates/ folder, it just means a file or a subfolder sitting in that working folder — no uploading.
1. Read and extract
The simplest task: "pull information X out of document Y."
"From the contract lease-contract.pdf, pull out the duration, the monthly amount, the notice period, and the start date. Put them in a short list."
The result is a clean list — no leafing through 12 pages of clauses.