Cowork disappeared. Here is what to do with what replaced it.

If you spent this year learning Claude Cowork, I have bad news and good news. On September 16, Anthropic deleted it.

The good news is that they did not take anything away. They folded it into regular Claude. You no longer pick between the quick chat and the tool that does long jobs. You just ask, and Claude works out which one the job needs.

That is worth about four minutes of your attention. What I want to spend the rest of this on is the one thing the change makes possible that is genuinely worth your Friday: setting up a report that builds itself every week while you are doing something else.

What actually changed

The short version, so you are not surprised when your screen looks different:

• Cowork is gone as a separate app. Everything it did happens inside a normal Claude conversation now.
• Claude decides how big the job is. A quick question gets a quick answer. A twelve step job gets worked through. You do not choose a mode.
• It keeps working after you close the laptop. This is the real change. Long jobs continue on their own.
• It asks before it acts. That is the default. You can loosen it so it only interrupts you when something is unusual. Leave the default on for a while.
• Three new things came along. Claude Slides builds presentations you can download as PowerPoint or PDF. Claude Docs writes documents with you and exports to Word or Google Docs. Both are in beta. Claude Design, the visual tool, now works right inside a conversation.
• Anything you already built carries over. Anthropic says your skills, your connectors, and your conversation history come with you.

It is rolling out in waves: Pro and Max first, then Team, then Free. If your screen has not changed yet, you are in the queue.

The thing actually worth doing

Every publication has a report somebody rebuilds from scratch every single week.

The ad revenue recap. The pacing report against last year. New and canceled subscriptions. Which stories pulled traffic. What is sold on each page with a deadline breathing down your neck.

It is the same shape every week. Only the numbers change. Somebody spends forty minutes on it Monday morning, and those forty minutes buy nothing except a document that looks exactly like last week's document.

That is the job to hand over. Not because it is hard. Because it is identical every time, which is precisely what a machine is good at and a person resents.

Here is how to set one up. Budget about an hour the first time, and then never again.

1 Pick the right report.

Not the most important one. The most repetitive one.

Three tests. If your report passes all three, it is the one:

1. Same shape every week. Same sections, same order, same kind of numbers.
2. The numbers live in one place. A spreadsheet, an export from your ad system, one folder.
3. Somebody actually rebuilds it. If nobody makes it today, do not automate it. Automating a report nobody reads just creates a report nobody reads, faster.

The ad revenue recap passes all three at most shops. Start there.

2 Put the numbers where Claude can reach them.

Claude cannot log into your ad system or your circulation software. It reads what you point it at.

The simplest path that works: keep the numbers in a Google Sheet, then connect Google Drive to Claude one time. In Claude, open Settings and look for Connectors. On some accounts it sits under Customize instead, so check both. Connect Google Drive, approve the Google screen, and you are done. After that, Claude can open and read that sheet by name whenever it needs to.

Two honest catches. Connectors need a paid plan. And Claude can read your spreadsheet but it cannot write back into one that already exists, so think of it as a tool that reads your numbers and writes a report, not one that updates your sheet.

No spreadsheet? Then export whatever your system will give you and upload the file into the conversation each week. You lose the fully automatic part, but the report still writes itself in about thirty seconds.

3 Build it once, by hand.

Open a normal Claude conversation and describe the report in plain words. Be fussier than feels necessary. Every detail you skip now is a detail you correct every week forever.

I want a weekly ad revenue recap for our publication.

The numbers are in the Google Sheet called [exact sheet name] in my Google Drive, on the tab called [tab name].

Each week, do this:
1. Total this week's booked revenue and compare it to the same week last year.
2. Break the total down by sales rep.
3. List any account that ran with us this week last year and has not booked yet this year.
4. Flag anything that looks wrong, like a missing rep or a number that moved more than 30 percent.

Write it as a short memo I could forward to my staff: two sentences of summary at the top, then the numbers, then the flags. Plain language, no jargon.

Do not guess at any number. If something is missing from the sheet, say that instead of estimating.

That last line matters more than anything else in the prompt. An AI asked for a complete report will produce a complete looking report. You want it to tell you when the sheet is short a column, not paper over it.

4 Correct it until it reads like yours.

The first version will be close and slightly wrong. Too long, numbers in the wrong order, a tone that sounds like a consultant.

Fix it in the same conversation, and say out loud that the fixes are permanent.

That is close. Three changes, and I want you to apply them to every future version of this report:

1. [for example: put the year over year comparison in the very first line]
2. [for example: round percentages to one decimal place]
3. [for example: always end with the flags, and when there are none, say "no flags this week"]

Show me the corrected version.

Repeat until you would have signed your name to it. Usually two or three rounds.

5 Tell it to do that every week.

Now the part that saves the forty minutes.

In the left sidebar of Claude, click Scheduled, then New task. You can have Claude set it up from what you just built, or fill it in yourself. Pick how often it should run. The choices are hourly, daily, weekly, weekdays, or only when you ask.

Weekly, Monday morning, an hour before you normally start the report.

That same Scheduled page is where you go later to see what is coming up, read what already ran, change the instructions, pause it for a week, or delete it. Scheduled tasks need a paid plan (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise). The free plan cannot do this part.

The first three weeks

Do not trust it yet. Trust it in a month.

Week one: build the report the old way too, and compare them line by line. You are checking the numbers, not the writing.

Week two: read Claude's version first, then spot check three numbers against the source.

Week three: if weeks one and two matched, spot check one number and move on with your morning.

If a number is ever wrong, do not just fix the number. Go back into the task instructions and fix the reason. That is the difference between a tool that gets better and a tool you quietly stop trusting.

While you are in there, ask for the slides

Since Claude Slides showed up in the same release, the meeting version of this report is now one more sentence:

Take this week's recap and turn it into five slides for our management meeting.

One idea per slide, big and readable from across the room. Put the year over year number on slide one. Make the last slide the flag list.

Then give me the PowerPoint file.

You get a deck you can edit, present, or download as PowerPoint or PDF. It is in beta, so check it before it goes on a screen in front of your board.

What this does not do

Worth saying plainly, because the announcements never do.

It does not know anything you have not shown it. It reads the sheet you point it at, and nothing else.

It cannot update your spreadsheet. Reading, yes. Writing back into an existing sheet, no.

It can still be wrong. It will state a wrong number in the same confident voice it uses for a right one, which is exactly why you spend three weeks checking.

And it does not replace the person who made the report. It gives them their Monday morning back. What they do with those forty minutes, selling something or chasing a story, is the whole return on this.

Start here

Pick the one report your team rebuilds every week. Spend an hour today teaching it once. Set it to run Monday.

Next week, the thing you used to build will be sitting there waiting for you instead.

Have a good weekend.