Before You Automate Anything: How To Set Claude Up As a Working Partner

By Julia Whyte from https://thecamberwell.com

Most people, by now, will have used AI as a chatbot: to reply to an email, analyse a document or put together a PowerPoint. But AI can now help with the work itself, automating some parts and pulling together the information you need for others. If you’ve heard people talking about automation or AI agents and wondered how they got from one to the other, this setup is part of the answer. And you don’t need to be a developer, but you do need to set Claude and your computer up properly.

At The Camberwell, I help businesses move from talking about AI to actually putting it to work. There’s no shortage of AI strategy, frameworks and predictions. The harder part is often much more practical: what do we do next? This guide is for anyone just getting started with Claude, or already using it but wondering whether they’ve got the setup quite right. There’s more to come in this series for those with their settings already in place.

Moving from chatbot to AI colleague is a bit of a mindset shift, so if you’re new to it, I usually think of it this way:

The professor in the coffee shop

You go into a coffee shop and strike up a conversation with the stranger at the next table. You explain what you do, where you work, how far you’ve got and where you’re stuck. Somehow, they turn out to be a professor in exactly the subject you need. They’ve got some brilliant insights and you finally feel as though you’re getting somewhere.

Then you go back the next day. There’s another very clever person at the table, but they’ve no idea who you are, so you start explaining it all again. Setting Claude up properly is more like arriving to find a consultant waiting for you. They’ve read the briefing document, which in Claude is your master prompt. They understand the business and ask how the current project is going. You can start with the work, not another introduction.

Things go well, so you ask them to send a team back to your office. Now you’re moving into Cowork, where Claude can use your files, browser and connected tools to take on longer pieces of work. That report that used to take you hours? Now your new consultants can have it waiting on your computer first thing on a Monday morning. They can sort out your filing that’s got out of hand too. The team still needs to know how to get into the building, which files matter and what they must check with you before changing anything. This is where you start getting into the setup and permissions for Cowork.

A note before we begin: Claude, like all AI platforms, is changing fast, so some of the detail below will date. This version is current as at August 2026.

Your How-To-Set-Up Claude setup

1. Download Claude Desktop. First things first: you need Claude on your computer, not just open in a browser. Download the Claude app and sign in. Whilst the browser is fine for chats, Claude Desktop is the fuller working environment, with controlled access to local folders, applications on your computer when enabled, and Claude in Chrome.

2. Download Claude in Chrome. Whilst we’re downloading, let’s also grab Claude in Chrome. This separate extension lets Claude read and work with the webpages you have open, including information behind logins or inside live dashboards. It can also click, navigate and complete actions, so begin with limited permissions.

3. Master prompt. Downloading done. Now, remember the brief for your coffee-shop consultant? That’s what we’re doing here. It needs to cover who you are, what the business does, your role, customers, priorities, terminology, constraints and systems. Ask Claude to help you draft it and review what’s missing when you’re done. Save it under Settings > Instructions for Claude.

4. Plug Claude into your other systems. Go to Customize > Connectors and look at the systems you actually use, such as email, Google Drive, Microsoft 365, Slack, your CRM or project-management tools. Start with the connections that would remove the most copying and pasting, and make sure you check and are comfortable with the permissions you’re giving, especially anything that allows Claude to change or delete.

5. Cowork global instructions. Your master prompt describes your world; these instructions explain how Claude should work within it. Give it an outline of the folders and systems you use, where your work lives and how those systems are connected, as well as the rules you want it to follow. Should it ask before editing, create a new version or always save finished work somewhere specific? Tell it what you’ve connected through Connectors and which systems it can access through custom connections, but don’t include passwords or API keys. Give Claude your master prompt and ask it to help you draft these instructions, then save them under Settings > Cowork > Global instructions.

6. Projects, folders and working briefs. Create Projects for work you’ll return to, such as your website, competitor monitoring, prospecting or a large account. Give each Project access to the right folder and its own instructions. Ask Claude to create a short PROJECT.md covering the purpose, key files, decisions and next actions. Remember, you’ll need to ask Claude to update it when something important changes. For folders containing critical documents, I sometimes give Claude a duplicate folder with copies of the key files so there’s no risk of it editing the originals.

7. Tone. Most of us have looked at an AI output and thought, “That sounds nothing like me.” One of the best fixes to put in place early is a tone skill, so Claude can write in a way that actually sounds like you. Find five or six emails or documents you’ve written that feel like you, give them to Claude and ask it to analyse what makes the writing yours, and ask it to help you turn that into a tone skill. Real examples are far more useful than asking for something “warm, professional and concise”. Install the skill once you and Claude have created it, and Claude should use it automatically when relevant. If something still sounds off, invoke the skill and ask whether it used your tone; it should magically rewrite the piece into something much closer.

You’re set up; now see what changes

If you worked through this as you went, congratulations! Claude should now feel much more like something you can work with than a blank box waiting for another question.

Try it on a few low-stakes tasks where you already know what good looks like, then adjust the setup where it goes wrong. You’ll soon have a much better basis for deciding what Claude might eventually do with less supervision.

Worth reading alongside this, my blog post: What AI will be pulling from once you point it at your business.

Getting this right at the start, and then turning it into automations, agents and working systems that suit the business, is a lot of what I do at The Camberwell. If you’d like a hand with either part, please get in touch.