Home / Cowork, the digital colleague

Rebuilding a real spreadsheet or report, not a draft to fix

Cowork delivers finished files, a workbook with formulas that genuinely recalculate, a laid out slideshow, a formatted document, not just raw text to pick up from there: naming the exact structure expected or supplying a template to copy brings the result closer to what will actually be used, and a figure that displays correctly in a cell never proves that the formula which produced it is correct.

A request sent to Cowork on a folder of scattered notes or figures comes back, according to Anthropic's documentation, as a finished file, a workbook with formulas that genuinely recalculate, a laid out slideshow, a formatted document, not a block of raw text to lay out yourself. The result still varies according to what the request describes. What follows on how to describe the structure and check a formula is a method from the author, not guidance documented by Anthropic.

Describing the structure, not just the content

A vague request, make me a tracking table, leaves Cowork to choose the structure itself, the number of tabs, the column names, where the totals sit. Naming the exact structure expected, one tab per month, a quantity column and a unit price column, a total at the bottom of each column, or supplying an example already in use to copy, gives a result closer to what will actually be used, without having to go over it a second time.

The same principle applies to a document or a slideshow. Naming the expected sections of a report, a contents page, one chapter per topic, a conclusion, avoids receiving a continuous block of text to break up by hand. For a slideshow, an existing template to copy fixes the number of slides, the order of the titles and where the key figures sit, rather than leaving Cowork to invent a plan.

The correct figure does not prove the formula

A cell can display exactly the right total while containing a wrong formula, for example a range that skips a row but whose error happens to cancel out on this particular dataset. Nothing in the display lets you tell the two cases apart.

Cellule C4 : =SOMME(B2:B12)*1,2
Valeur affichee : 240,00

The only way to know which of the two situations has occurred is to click on the cell and read the formula in the formula bar, never to trust the displayed figure alone. The habit applies to every cell that carries a calculation, not just the final total: a tracking workbook often repeats the same formula from one tab to another, and an error copied twelve times gives twelve wrong totals that stay consistent with each other.

A template beats a long set of instructions

Attaching an example of a layout already used within the cooperative, even an old one, guides Cowork more effectively than a list of written instructions. It is the same logic as for the brief that Cowork can act on: naming a precise output costs less to correct than a vague one.

Achats janvier : 120 crayons a 0,40, 30 classeurs a 2,10
Achats fevrier : 80 crayons, 15 classeurs, prix non notes

Onglet Janvier | Colonne Quantite | Colonne Prix unitaire
Cellule C4 : =SOMME(B2:B12)*1,2