You'll finish with: Claude open in the right place for the work you do.
Three things share the word "project" and it costs people weeks. Here's the difference in plain terms.
On claude.ai or the Chat tab. Upload documents, write instructions, every conversation starts briefed. Can't touch files on your computer. Shareable with staff on Team plans.
In the desktop app. Mounts real folders on your machine, keeps a memory that survives between sessions, runs work in the background.
"Mounts a folder" means you point it at a folder on your computer and it can read and write files in there, like a person with access to that drive.
Terminal, IDE, desktop or web. Everything in these courses works here. Built for code, but nothing stops you pointing it at business documents.
Where does your work end up?
It ends up as a file on my computerCowork
It ends up as an answer I readChat project
I want agents and hard limitsClaude Code
Most small businesses run a chat project for thinking and one Cowork project for doing. That's a fine place to stop — you can add the third later.
Terminal is the plain text window where you type commands instead of clicking. Mac: press Cmd+Space, type "terminal". Windows: search "PowerShell". cd just means "go to this folder".
You're looking at an empty project with your business name on it. Nothing else in it. That's correct — it's meant to be empty at this point.
Can't find Projects anywhere? You're likely on the free plan, or the app needs updating. Update first, then look again.