Katie Robbert on Putting Claude Cowork to Work  🔗 **Source:** [Katie Robbert on Putting Claude Cowork to Work](https://share.snipd.com/episode/883045bb-adde-4ce5-bbd8-5dc4e65e71c4) ## Highlights - **Allocate R&D Time And Clear Company Tasks** - Do carve out R&D sandbox time for innovators while giving them focused, non-R&D tasks for company priorities. - Katie uses a weekly sit-down with Christopher to separate Chris's playground experiments from company deliverables so expectations stay clear. Transcript: Katie Robbert I got pretty good at, you know, working within the different chat functionalities. So you have open AI is chat GPT, you have Google's Gemini, you have Anthropics, Claude, and the chat functionality for each of those is pretty good at brainstorming and ideation, but Not so much the execution because it doesn't have any sort of autonomous AI built in. And we decided as a company to look into the Cloud Desktop version, which does have autonomous AI built in. Has three different core functionalities. It has the chat, which syncs with your chat in the web browser. It has co-work that is a standalone. And then it has code, which syncs with your code versions, both on the web and terminal. And then in this desktop version, co-work is sort of an anomaly. It's interesting because it literally is its own isolated thing. So what I'm doing in co-work, you're not going to see. Chris isn't going to see. Kelsey isn't going to see. What I'm doing in chat and code, they are going to see. So co-work is interesting, but it's a really good place for people to start if they want to learn a little bit more about agentic AI. So one of the nice benefits, one of the reasons we selected Claude Desktop to go with is because it had really great connectors. So connectors to third-party tools like your CRM systems, like your email systems, your web analytics systems, your SEO systems, other vendors. So there's a lot of technology vendors that have connectors that you can say, I have an account with this tech vendor, Claude Desktop, you connect with it. So now I can extract data from this tech vendor. One of the examples I gave on a talk I gave recently was how I was lamenting to you and the rest of the Trust Insights team that I can never get good quality data out of our CRM because we're Limited financially of what level of service we can afford, which included more advanced reporting. But now with Claude Desktop, it has a connector to that CRM and using Claude Cowork, I can instruct it to go fetch any kind of data that I'm after because it has access to all of it. I don't need that reporting system that I can't afford inside the CRM that would probably still be limited. So I can now create my own reports. And that was just sort of the beginning. I really tried to figure out like, what is it that I can do? I want to build web pages. Well, what are the, you know, what is the, you know, hosting system that I have? Well, we have WordPress through WP Engine. So how is our website structured? Really exploring, you know, can you, Claude Cowork, explore the website for me? I don't have to do it using the Chrome extension and tell me what you're finding. It can read the metadata. It can read the invisible data on websites that are publicly available, not gated, unless you have a login. And it can extract all of that information for you. I, as as the human, no longer have to struggle and do it. So what I started doing was just going nuts and extracting data from all these different places. And I was like, oh, this is really cool. Let me build an analysis out of this and let me figure out how to do something. The real unlock for me was when I was able to pull all of our web analytics data, pull, you know, our sales playbook, pull our knowledge blocks and our ICPs and all of those things together In a project, which is what large language models are really good at doing. Like summarizing all of these different data points together, finding the patterns, but then also using it to build an HTML template that is responsive and ready to just copy and paste Into our website. So once I figured out how all of those pieces fit together, within a matter of minutes, I could overhaul an entire services pages or an instant insights page. And I had an HTML ready, like copy paste ready template to just go into WordPress, paste it in. It was all polished. It was branded. It was structured and all the different pieces in it. And like that became such a huge unlock for me of like, what else can I do? Can I do this? When I started really exploring the autonomous features in cowork, not only could it build the HTML pages, it could also build the website itself for me. So one of the projects that I ran, one of the experiments that I ran, because again, I checked that we had backups on our website so that if I really blew anything up, we could just roll it Back. So that was probably step number one. Stump number two was saying, okay, so we've built the plan. We have all the HTML. Can you, Claude Cowork, autonomously insert it into the website for me so I don't have to do it so you can copy paste everything? Oh, and by the way, here's our whole technical SEO plan of things we want to fix up. While you're in there, can you do that as well? And of course, Claude Carver is like, yeah, absolutely. I'll get right on it. And so I ended up scheduling that as four separate. I broke it down into smaller pieces, but four separate projects that ran over the course of a weekend. And when I showed back up on Monday, it was all done. I didn't have to spend my time copying and pasting meta descriptions, keywords, you know, getting all that stuff, getting the HTML in there. It did it for me. The reason it worked, and if you know anything about me, you know that I love planning and process, is that I used our Trust Insights 5P framework by Trust Insights to get all of those requirements Really carefully detailed out before giving it to the large language model. Once that was done, it was essentially like delegating it to another person saying, this is the exact plan. If you just follow this plan with these outcomes that are expected, you can do the thing. I don't need to babysit you. ([Time 0:02:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a30c26f0-3198-4c20-b30c-ebb5c6f37bed)) - **Agentic Cowork Extends Chat Into Autonomous Workflows** - Agentic AI in Claude Desktop adds autonomous workflows beyond chat, code, and connectors. - Katie found Cowork isolated from chat/code and useful to run tasks that other team members can't see or mustn't see. Transcript: Katie Robbert And we decided as a company to look into the Cloud Desktop version, which does have autonomous AI built in. Has three different core functionalities. It has the chat, which syncs with your chat in the web browser. It has co-work that is a standalone. And then it has code, which syncs with your code versions, both on the web and terminal. And then in this desktop version, co-work is sort of an anomaly. It's interesting because it literally is its own isolated thing. So what I'm doing in co-work, you're not going to see. Chris isn't going to see. Kelsey isn't going to see. What I'm doing in chat and code, they are going to see. So co-work is interesting, but it's a really good place for people to start if they want to learn a little bit more about agentic AI. So one of the nice benefits, one of the reasons we selected Claude Desktop to go with is because it had really great connectors. So connectors to third-party tools like your CRM systems, like your email systems, your web analytics systems, your SEO systems, other vendors. So there's a lot of technology vendors that have connectors that you can say, I have an account with this tech vendor, Claude Desktop, you connect with it. So now I can extract data from this tech vendor. One of the examples I gave on a talk I gave recently was how I was lamenting to you and the rest of the Trust Insights team that I can never get good quality data out of our CRM because we're Limited financially of what level of service we can afford, which included more advanced reporting. But now with Claude Desktop, it has a connector to that CRM and using Claude Cowork, I can instruct it to go fetch any kind of data that I'm after because it has access to all of it. I don't need that reporting system that I can't afford inside the CRM that would probably still be limited. So I can now create my own reports. And that was just sort of the beginning. I really tried to figure out like, what is it that I can do? I want to build web pages. Well, what are the, you know, what is the, you know, hosting system that I have? Well, we have WordPress through WP Engine. So how is our website structured? Really exploring, you know, can you, Claude Cowork, explore the website for me? I don't have to do it using the Chrome extension and tell me what you're finding. It can read the metadata. It can read the invisible data on websites that are publicly available, not gated, unless you have a login. And it can extract all of that information for you. I, as as the human, no longer have to struggle and do it. ([Time 0:03:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d1ff65e-86ed-489d-b8cb-f79461c6ae11)) - **Use Connectors To Unlock Locked CRM Data** - Do use Claude Desktop connectors to pull otherwise gated or costly CRM and analytics reports directly into projects. - Katie bypassed paid CRM reporting limits by connecting Claude to the CRM and extracting customized data for her own reports. Transcript: Katie Robbert So connectors to third-party tools like your CRM systems, like your email systems, your web analytics systems, your SEO systems, other vendors. So there's a lot of technology vendors that have connectors that you can say, I have an account with this tech vendor, Claude Desktop, you connect with it. So now I can extract data from this tech vendor. One of the examples I gave on a talk I gave recently was how I was lamenting to you and the rest of the Trust Insights team that I can never get good quality data out of our CRM because we're Limited financially of what level of service we can afford, which included more advanced reporting. But now with Claude Desktop, it has a connector to that CRM and using Claude Cowork, I can instruct it to go fetch any kind of data that I'm after because it has access to all of it. I don't need that reporting system that I can't afford inside the CRM that would probably still be limited. So I can now create my own reports. ([Time 0:04:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fed64352-f825-40b6-abd0-c5f92d42120b)) - **Weekend Website Overhaul Done By Claude** - Katie had Claude combine web analytics, sales playbook, ICPs and knowledge blocks to generate branded HTML pages. - She handed polished copy-paste-ready HTML into WordPress and scheduled Claude to autonomously insert it over a weekend. Transcript: Katie Robbert I really tried to figure out like, what is it that I can do? I want to build web pages. Well, what are the, you know, what is the, you know, hosting system that I have? Well, we have WordPress through WP Engine. So how is our website structured? Really exploring, you know, can you, Claude Cowork, explore the website for me? I don't have to do it using the Chrome extension and tell me what you're finding. It can read the metadata. It can read the invisible data on websites that are publicly available, not gated, unless you have a login. And it can extract all of that information for you. I, as as the human, no longer have to struggle and do it. So what I started doing was just going nuts and extracting data from all these different places. And I was like, oh, this is really cool. Let me build an analysis out of this and let me figure out how to do something. The real unlock for me was when I was able to pull all of our web analytics data, pull, you know, our sales playbook, pull our knowledge blocks and our ICPs and all of those things together In a project, which is what large language models are really good at doing. Like summarizing all of these different data points together, finding the patterns, but then also using it to build an HTML template that is responsive and ready to just copy and paste Into our website. So once I figured out how all of those pieces fit together, within a matter of minutes, I could overhaul an entire services pages or an instant insights page. And I had an HTML ready, like copy paste ready template to just go into WordPress, paste it in. It was all polished. It was branded. It was structured and all the different pieces in it. And like that became such a huge unlock for me of like, what else can I do? Can I do this? When I started really exploring the autonomous features in cowork, not only could it build the HTML pages, it could also build the website itself for me. So one of the projects that I ran, one of the experiments that I ran, because again, I checked that we had backups on our website so that if I really blew anything up, we could just roll it Back. So that was probably step number one. Stump number two was saying, okay, so we've built the plan. We have all the HTML. Can you, Claude Cowork, autonomously insert it into the website for me so I don't have to do it so you can copy paste everything? Oh, and by the way, here's our whole technical SEO plan of things we want to fix up. While you're in there, can you do that as well? And of course, Claude Carver is like, yeah, absolutely. I'll get right on it. And so I ended up scheduling that as four separate. I broke it down into smaller pieces, but four separate projects that ran over the course of a weekend. And when I showed back up on Monday, it was all done. I didn't have to spend my time copying and pasting meta descriptions, keywords, you know, getting all that stuff, getting the HTML in there. It did it for me. The reason it worked, and if you know anything about me, you know that I love planning and process, is that I used our Trust Insights 5P framework by Trust Insights to get all of those requirements Really carefully detailed out before giving it to the large language model. Once that was done, it was essentially like delegating it to another person saying, this is the exact plan. If you just follow this plan with these outcomes that are expected, you can do the thing. I don't need to babysit you. And that's what I did. And so being able to do that has saved all of us collectively so much time because I'm not asking more of the team. I'm able to just do the thing and then hand off the final product. ([Time 0:05:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a4ff52d6-b488-404b-adbf-de2c4694727a)) - **Plan With A Framework Before Delegating To Agents** - Do prepare detailed requirements using a framework before delegating to an agentic model. - Katie used Trust Insights' 5P framework so Cowork could follow precise outcomes without babysitting. Transcript: Katie Robbert The reason it worked, and if you know anything about me, you know that I love planning and process, is that I used our Trust Insights 5P framework by Trust Insights to get all of those requirements Really carefully detailed out before giving it to the large language model. Once that was done, it was essentially like delegating it to another person saying, this is the exact plan. If you just follow this plan with these outcomes that are expected, you can do the thing. I don't need to babysit you. ([Time 0:08:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/daf53ad7-f41c-4920-be70-41d17ea97a99)) - **PowerPoint Skill Generates Branded Decks** - Katie built a PowerPoint skill in Claude Cowork that generated branded slide decks from an outline. - The skill took ~half a day to create and produced consistent A-minus quality decks shareable with the whole team. Transcript: Katie Robbert Oh, that was huge. That was, I mean, I was so excited when I figured that piece out because that was one of the reasons why we decided to more heavily invest in Claude was because I had been going through each Of the different large language models, the major ones to try to figure out, can I build a slide deck? Can I build a slide deck? How does it build slides? And it was not something that any of the large language models at the time was really great at. But then when I tried it with Claude Cowork, it pretty much nailed it on the first try. And I was just elated. I was beside myself because I saw the potential and I was like, okay, um, what if I want to do this slide deck over and over and over again? And Claude Cowork was like, oh, so you want to build a skill? And I was like, yes, yes, I do. Because we have our brand guidelines. We have our colors, our tone, our text, our fonts. We have all of that stuff. And we had a couple of PowerPoint template decks, but they were pretty limited. It's not that they were hard to work with, but building a PowerPoint deck, at least for me, it just, it takes longer than it should because I'm sort of, should I put this here? What about the formatting? What about this? And when I realized that I could take the template that we had preexisting with all of the different slide types, and I could take the brand guidelines and I could take examples of decks That I liked, but also most importantly, decks that I didn't like. So I could say, don't do this, like do this, don't do this. I gave all of that information to Claude Coker. I said, can you help me build a skill that I can share with the rest of the team so that anytime we give you an outline, you can build a slide deck and we can all have consistency across the Board. And Claude Coker is like, yeah, I can absolutely do that. I have a skill builder. Let's go ahead and do it. So that probably at the beginning probably took me about half a day to build the skill, to get it right, to iterate, to make sure the colors and all the formatting was correct. But once it was built, I was able to share it with the rest of the team. And now I don't have to be nervous about the amount of clip art or the amount of random formatted slides that makes it look like Chris and I do different things for different companies. Now we have a lot more consistency with the brand. And so he can still modify it. He can still put in the things that he likes to put in slide decks, but the overall foundation of our slides are now consistent, which is something that I had been striving for. And he and I could just basically open up Claude Coworker Claude Code and say, here's my outline, build me a slide deck. ([Time 0:12:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f2439f33-479c-4dad-927b-0ce61db06db3)) - **Agentic Tools Scaled Enablement And Case Studies** - Katie used Cowork to build style guides, sales playbooks, UTMs, and case study generators from existing deliverables. - She turned old scopes into ready case studies and scaled website case study publishing quickly. Transcript: Katie Robbert So I've built out concepts for talks. I've built my own personal website just to sort of... I did that not in the sense that I needed a personal website, but really just to test what I could do with Agentic AI. But it not only built the website, it built all the content, but it also built a style guide, which I didn't have for my own personal brand. So I said, I need a style guide before we build a website so you can use that for like fonts and colors. It's like, great. What do you like? And we just went through a series. It was like, give me some examples of things you like, things you don't like. And we went from there. So building a style guide, building a sales playbook, building other kinds of enablement tools. And so when we talk about enablement, it's really how to get started with something. So it could be sales enablement. It could be training enablement. I've overhauled our UTM governance training presentation and corresponding Excel spreadsheets. I've built a lot of Excel spreadsheets that I use. The other thing that I really like about coworker cloud desktop in general is that you can schedule tasks. And so I've built a lot of trackers that now run on a weekly cadence in the background. So I have them all staggered to run off peak hours. So it's not eating up usage during, you know, business hours, but it'll run at like Saturday at midnight or Sunday at 9am or something like that. But when I show up on Monday morning, tracker's updated. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to annoy the team with, here's what we're doing this week. Here's what I learned over the weekend. Here's what the data is showing. I actually built a skill to take the work that we do, like an old scope of work or the client deliverables and turn it into a case study that's ready to put up on the website. So that was really helpful. I was able to scale the case studies pretty quickly. ([Time 0:19:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/91850bba-f12e-44e0-84d5-366503ac09e5)) - **Schedule Agent Tasks Off Peak For Efficiency** - Do schedule background agentic tasks during off-peak hours to preserve token budget and produce ready Monday updates. - Katie staggers trackers to run weekends or nights so dashboards and trackers are updated when the team returns. Transcript: Katie Robbert The other thing that I really like about coworker cloud desktop in general is that you can schedule tasks. And so I've built a lot of trackers that now run on a weekly cadence in the background. So I have them all staggered to run off peak hours. So it's not eating up usage during, you know, business hours, but it'll run at like Saturday at midnight or Sunday at 9am or something like that. But when I show up on Monday morning, tracker's updated. ([Time 0:20:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1afa899b-e235-4c6f-843f-4052d8428698)) - **Pilots Stall Without Executive Commitment** - Pilot purgatory happens when organizations avoid committing to change due to budget and visibility fears. - Katie sees companies freeze at pilots; the fix is tying one or two AI initiatives to business goals and team skills. Transcript: Katie Robbert So, you know, what we're finding and what I'm hearing, and I actually put this in the newsletter, the Trust Insights newsletter recently, is that people are hiding behind pilots because They don't want to commit to things. Because committing to something means money, budget, visibility. And so what we're actually seeing, you know, and whether they admit it or not. And so a lot of people are doing pilots correctly, but maybe they're not the ones who have commitment phobia. Maybe it's the executives who have commitment phobia who are like, okay, this was great, but now you actually want me to commit to this? Like we actually have to do this now is like a daily practice. So we're seeing a lot of that. And so it's helping clients get out of pilot purgatory and figure out, let's pick one thing that went really, well and start to roll that out because there's no i mean just we've just been Talking about all the different use cases there's no shortage of things that you could be doing and we all see the potential we see the possibility and that in and of itself is a block because We kind of get that analysis paralysis of but i could do this and i could do this and i could do this i could do this how do i prioritize And then how do I do that in a way that doesn't burden my Team because I'm asking them to do new things? And so that's a lot of what we're helping clients with is, okay, you've done all the pilots, you've done all the proving out of what could work. Now let's help you focus in by tying one or two initiatives to your business goals, to the skill sets on your team, to the places where there's big opportunities. And that's the kind of work that we can objectively do as an outside party, because it's not that these companies aren't smart, they aren't capable, they're just too close to it. ([Time 0:22:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb870fef-6c3e-41a1-be8b-15e592fb3fe7))