Two things called "project"

You'll finish with: You stop confusing the two.

Two different features share the word "project" and it causes more confusion than anything else in Claude.

Same word, two features

Chat project
Cowork project
Lives
In your account
On your computer
Touches files
No
Yes
Shareable
Yes
No
Best for
Thinking
Producing

The one that matters for teams

Only chat projects can be shared. If the goal is everyone working from the same context, that's the one — Cowork stays personal by design.

Plain English

Chat project = shared filing cabinet everyone can read. Cowork project = your own desk, with your own files on it.

How to know which you're in

Ask it to save a file. Cowork saves one. Chat shows you the text and asks you to copy it.

If it says it saved something but you can't find it, you're in Cowork and looking in the wrong folder — ask it for the full path. If you expected Cowork and got text to copy, you're in a chat project with the same name. That's the whole confusion this chapter is about, and it catches everyone once.

Do this now
  1. Decide whether the goal is a shared team context, or your own production work.
  2. Shared → chat project. That's the rest of this course.
  3. Your own files → Cowork, and the Cowork course covers it properly.

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