I've been showing people how I use AI since January 2023 and now the first few training cohorts have moved into making AI-powered agents. During the next three months, I'm working with people affiliated with the IRDG Innovation Skillnet, Action Tuam, and researchers from SETU.ie who have the €20 monthly Claude Pro plan where subscribers can access plugins. They're not intimidated by code blocks that appear on their screens.
But before I begin, I often tell prospective trainees that they should take 10 minutes to read and respond to a H5P Interactive Book I've made. The book contains an interactive video with some questions that should be answered.
It's all about workflows and role packages
Along with Larry Maguire, I have developed a series of five microlearning chapters that cover most of the functions that people want to use with Claude Co-work. The Claude Co-work training involves working with plugins that are comprehensive “role packages” that bundle together skills, commands, connectors, and manifests. Unlike individual “Skills” that previous Claude training covered to handle single tasks, a plugin defines how Claude handles an entire job function. We learn more about 11 official Anthropic plugins that are ready for immediate use. The training shows how to customise plugins with simple text files in Markdown and JSON formats. Claude becomes agentic very quickly. It moves beyond answering questions to completing entire end-to-end projects. Plugins can be shared across teams to ensure consistent organisational knowledge through core business use cases for customer support, marketing, sales, project marketing, and compliance.
Covering core business use cases
1. Customer Support
With Claude Co-work training, we take away a plugin that acts as a first-line support agent to manage high volumes of customer inquiries. Claude Co-work helps to triage and prioritise. It can cross-reference issues across the data sources that it examines. It can generate personalised responses to customer issues.2. Marketing Department
Claude's marketing plugin acts like a virtual creative team that maintains brand consistency and scales content. It can manage campaigns, create blog posts, cross-check content against brand guidelines. Once it knows your area of interest, Claude Co-work can research competitors and document market trends. I like the way all these capabilities can connect with Slack, Canva, Figma, and Notion.3. Productivity & Project Management
We modify a plugin that focuses on workplace memory and task execution. This means we can add and monitors the status of tasks naturally just by conversing with Claude. After several interactions with the project, Claude learns terms of reference and project history, which means it gets smarter over time. In my experience, Claude tells me what I've missed. If I want a visual dashboard, Claude can automatically generate local HTML files to provide a live snapshot of project progress.4.. Sales & Prospecting
During this microlearning session, we turn Claude into a proactive sales team to supercharge a sales pipeline. We can spin up a basic CRM that connects directly to Claude and to an email service. Once that's in place, we train Claude to score prospects and to draft personalised messages or emails. This heavy lifting assist with call prep, account research, and daily briefings.5. Legal & Compliance I used to work in a busy Pentagon office where I would have saved hours every day if I could have automated the high volume of administrative tasks. Claude can be trained to take on that job, while keeping people responsible for oversight. Claude can help review contracts by automating NDA triage. It can enhance compliance by managing privacy policies, terms of service, and litigation support. Once you give it roles to play, if can assume personas that are configurable for Commercial Council or Product Council roles.
If you're already paying to use an AI, I recommend you seriously consider getting started with Claude Co-work. During training sessions that I run, you get to see Claude tools, browse the official marketplace, and upload custom configurations. If you're interested in achieving higher levels of productivity, I recommend you reach out to Josh Blake in the IRDG to join the waiting list for the next Irish Innovation Skillnet session.