LessonEmail & work
Cowork can't reach your laptop files when it's closed
The poster points to Anthropic's help page: since new Claude Cowork tasks run in the cloud, they keep going after you close the Claude desktop app, but they can only read your connected local folders while that app is open on your computer. So a weekly report that depends on a spreadsheet on your laptop won't see it if the laptop is shut. His tip is to list where each input lives before you hand a job over, and to give a cloud copy for jobs that must run without your computer, noting that a copy goes out of date.
PromptBefore you start, list every file and app this task needs and where each one lives: my computer, the cloud or...