Transcription
Notion and co-work together is really just a super advanced version of a Claude project. And that's the way I want everyone to think about it. Okay?
So, real quick before before we get into the co-work. This This is how I tend to use projects. It's a very simple workflow. Okay? So, the first is I chat with Claude inside of the project window. All right. So, if I'm inside an existing project, I'm chatting with Claude and I'm like, "Here's the thing that I want to do." So, as you can see, this is a little screenshot from a sci-fi novel I'm working on. And I said, "Okay, I just uploaded the last chapter, chapter 21, to your memory. Now, let's move on and let's write together chapter 22." Before I move forward, I want to make sure that the previous point of context has been uploaded. I want to make sure that Claude understands, "Okay, I just uploaded this thing. Let's make sure we're on the same page before we continue."
Then, as I assemble the new thing, this is This is like projects and Notion, not co-work. This is This is like the the most beginner manual version. As I start to draft something inside of Claude, I draft it inside of Claude and then I just copy paste it over to Notion. I'm like, "Okay, like I like what I've come up with here inside Claude." I copy paste it over to Notion. Maybe I continue to work on it myself. Right? But I kind of separate the two. And then, wherever I finish in Notion, so let's say I work on something, I copy paste it over to Notion, I work on it some more, and then I go, "I really like my final draft." I export it from Notion as a markdown file. Now, you can do a PDF, but Claude prefers markdown files. And then I drag it and I re-upload it to the Claude project. So it's it's it becomes as you you work through or as you use a Claude project and maybe you do your drafting or writing somewhere else. Like it could be a Google Doc, it could be Obsidian, it could be wherever. Right? All you're doing is you're chatting inside the Claude project. You're moving or you're you're doing the version two in some sort of writing workspace. And then when you land on a finished draft, you export it and you re-upload it to the project. And you do that little loop over and over and over again. Right? So is does is everyone under- understand? This is like the V1, this is the beginner version of where this is going to go with Code Work.
Yeah, so Hillary, that's an important distinction. You don't You don't take the final draft and then re-upload it to the chat. Because if you re-upload it to the chat, you're basically just saying, "Hey Claude, I just want you to remember this for now." If you re-upload it to the project's memory, like here inside files, you're saying, "I want you to remember this forever." And so that's the difference, okay? So if you're if you're iterating on something, yeah, you could throw it in the chat, you could go back and forth. But the whole key is once you land on a finished draft, you want that finished draft to go back into the memory.
This is also why projects are so great for for example, providing writing services for other people. Because every time you write and like this is where it gets smarter over time, is every time you write a piece for a client and they approve it, that approved piece can go back into their client project, which means the project gets smarter over time. The project gets more context, right? Like what are all the things that this client talks about? And the client gets better and better at recognizing the style. You're like, oh, you you've given me, you know, 30 approved pieces inside this project. I have a good sense of how things should be written inside this project.
So now Again, there's a reason why I'm walking through these things in steps. Claude co-work and the way to think about using co-work and notion is it's all the benefits of a project plus the ability to do some of the work for you. Okay? So in a project, think of a project as sort of one big read me file. The the inside of a Claude project, Claude can't really do things on your behalf. It can't go into the memory and then pull, you know, chapter 12 that you wrote 6 weeks ago and then proofread it and then make some changes to it and then re-upload it to its memory. It can't do that work for you. What it can do is it can read information and give things back to you as ideas, right? Like the chat, it can interact with the files, it can interact with the content, but it can't do anything with it. And that's the limitation. So that's why projects are great for super beginners because it's it's a way of dipping your toe in the water. So you can start to get a feel for, okay, if I give Claude more context, it can give me back information.
Where this goes with co-work is with co-work and notion, it's everything that you can do with projects, except now Claude can work with you or work on your behalf. So it is more advanced. It's more automated, there is slightly more room for error. So, I'm going to walk through a couple use cases of like how I would encourage you to to approach this. But, it has more capabilities. And this is where once you sort of become proficient with projects, with co-work, as you understand the things that you can ask for or the things that you can instruct it to do, your leverage starts to run away because now you aren't the one having to do everything. Now, you have a little robot that can do things on your behalf. Okay?
So, benefits of co-work. First, if you create a fresh Notion page as a hub, which I'm going to walk through, this is this this has been the best workflow that I've found for myself. You can think of a fresh Notion page as a project. Okay? So, actually here, I was doing some testing. I was chatting with co-work, and I'll show you an example of this, and I said, "I just created a new page, a new hub in my Notion titled Claude Co-work and Notion Workshop." That's where I want to work right now. So, you can think of a page in Notion as like the highest hierarchy of that file structure, and that page is essentially serving the same purpose as a Claude project. So, a Notion page is really just the first step of going, "I am creating a project." You're just going to have the project live in Notion instead of Claude projects. Okay?
Second is you have all of the benefits of projects, but now because we're using co-work and Notion, Claude can actually do things inside of Notion with me or for me, which it can't do inside of a Claude project. Okay?
And then third, this is where things get really cool. Because a Claude project is essentially just a chat window plus memory. Every time you want to do something with Claude, it it's a one-to-one back and forth. Right? It's like I'm in the Claude project, I ask for something, Claude gives me the information. I run a prompt, Claude gives me the output. It's a one-to-one back and forth. Once you elevate from Claude projects to co-work in Notion, you can start to use bigger and bigger skills, or you can start to chain Claude skills together. So now it's not just I run a prompt, Claude gives me an output. I run a prompt, Claude gives me an output. Now Claude has space to run. Claude has Notion. Claude has like all this space to do things in. And so what you can do is you can start to build more and more advanced skills, or you can chain skills together, where Claude goes, "All right, I got an open field over here, and you want me to do not just this, but then afterwards you want me to do this, and then after that you want me to do this, and then after that you want me to do this." And that's where the leverage starts getting crazy, because you can instruct it to do a series of things, and then it will go execute that series of things inside of your Notion, and you can walk away and go make yourself a fresh cup of coffee. And that that's where things get really cool. And so talk about like being at the forefront of AI, even this. Like this is not super technically complicated, but the vast majority of people have no no awareness of this whatsoever. And so if you are even here, you are living in the future, literally. It is It is really wild to connect Coda to Notion and basically aim Claude and be like, "I want you to work in this doc and you have you have infinite space to run. And I want you to do these five tasks sequentially. Ready, go." And then you can walk away. You could You could go do whatever you want. Come back in 20 minutes, 30 minutes and it's not just one task is done. It's five tasks are done. And that's that's where things get really cool.
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