Every time you start a new Cowork session, Claude starts fresh. No memory of previous conversations, no knowledge of your preferences, no context about the work you’ve been doing. For one-off tasks, that’s fine. For anything you return to regularly — client work, weekly reports, a marketing project — it gets tedious. You end up repeating the same context every time.
Projects solve this. A project in Cowork is a persistent workspace with its own memory, instructions, files, and scheduled tasks. When you open a project, Claude already knows the background.
What a project contains
A project is built around four elements:
Instructions tell Claude how to behave within this project. Tone, formatting rules, terminology, things to avoid — anything that should apply consistently. If you’re working on a newsletter, your instructions might specify the audience, the maximum word count, and the style. If it’s a data analysis project, you might tell Claude which metrics matter and how to format output.
Context is the information Claude can reference. This can be a local folder on your computer (so Claude sees the files in it), a linked chat project from claude.ai, or specific URLs. When you link a folder, Claude can read and write files in it, just like in a regular Cowork session — but the folder stays linked across sessions.
Memory is what makes projects genuinely useful. Claude remembers what happened in previous sessions within the project. If you told Claude last week that “revenue” in your reports always means gross revenue, Claude remembers that next time. Memory is scoped per project — what Claude learns in one project doesn’t leak into another.
Scheduled tasks can be attached to a project. A daily summary, a weekly data check, a recurring report — these run automatically within the project’s context, using its instructions and folder.
Creating a project
Open Cowork and look for the Projects section. You have three options:
Start from scratch. You name the project, write instructions, and optionally link a folder. Good for new initiatives where you’re starting clean.
Import from a Claude project. If you’ve been using Claude’s web-based Projects feature on claude.ai, you can import the files and instructions into a Cowork project. This gives you all the context you’ve built up, now with Cowork’s ability to create files, run code, and use connectors.
Use an existing folder. Point Cowork to a folder that already contains your project files. Claude indexes the contents and you can add instructions on top. The fastest way to get started if you already have an organised folder structure.
A practical example
Let’s say you do a monthly newsletter for your company. Without a project, each session starts with:
I'm writing a newsletter. The audience is our B2B customers in Belgium.
Tone: professional but warm. Max 800 words. Always include 3-5 short
articles. The template is in my Newsletter folder...
With a project, you set this up once:
Project name: Monthly Newsletter
Instructions:
This is our monthly B2B newsletter for Belgian customers.
Tone: professional but warm, in Dutch.
Format: 3-5 short articles, max 800 words total.
Always start with the most important news.
The template is newsletter-template.docx in the project folder.
Linked folder: ~/Documents/Newsletter/
Now, every time you open this project, Claude already knows the format, the audience, and where to find the template. You just say “Write the March newsletter — main topics are the new pricing, the client event in April, and the blog about sustainability” and Claude produces a first draft without further explanation.
Over time, memory makes it even better. If you corrected Claude’s word choices in a previous session (“don’t use ‘synergy’, our readers hate that”), Claude remembers.
When to use a project vs. a regular session
Not everything needs a project. Use a regular Cowork session for one-off tasks: converting a file, a quick analysis, creating a single presentation. Projects earn their keep when you return to the same type of work repeatedly and benefit from Claude remembering context.
Good candidates for projects: client accounts, recurring reports, marketing campaigns, data analysis that builds on previous work, content creation with consistent guidelines, and any work where you find yourself re-explaining context.
Limitations
Projects are stored locally on your computer. There’s no cloud sync — if you switch to a different machine, your projects don’t follow. For Team and Enterprise plans, projects can’t be shared between team members (yet). And projects aren’t available in Claude Code, only in Cowork.
These are early-days limitations. Projects launched in March 2026, and Anthropic is actively developing the feature. Cloud sync and sharing are likely to come.
What’s next?
- New to Cowork? Start with the beginner’s guide
- Want to give Claude persistent instructions? Read our CLAUDE.md deep dive
- Need recurring tasks within a project? See scheduled tasks