Chaining the tools together is where it stops being a demo

I said I'd report back once I'd had a chance to properly play with Claude Cowork. It's really, really good. But the real challenge is figuring out how to use it beyond the cool-but-mundane "reorganise this folder" kind of task.

To begin with, I couldn't think of anything. I just sat there staring at the page waiting for inspiration.

Then I started thinking bigger.

My training website had been bugging me because it's been somewhat generic ever since I launched it. For simplicity I kept it on a stock WordPress theme and, well, it was functional. It listed my standard training offerings and that was it.

So here's what I did.

I instructed Cowork to look at the website and give me recommendations for improving it. One of the recommendations was design and layout. It made a series of points and then created a mockup.

"Okay, write some instructions for Claude Code to implement."

Within seconds that file was ready. I took the instructions and gave them to Claude Code, sitting in the website's folder. Ahead of those instructions, I told it to make a new theme, so I could easily swap back to the original if needed.

Code got to work.

Then I got a bit more ambitious.

I hooked the folder up to GitHub, so that every iteration was tracked and, crucially, so that Code would be able to read issues assigned to the project.

Then I got Cowork to check it could access the repo. I asked it to create an issue to be done. It suggested changing the About page around, and threw a whole set of briefing notes into Issue 1.

On my server, I asked Code to check for new issues. It found the issue, got to work, updated the website accordingly, and closed the issue.

I started getting Cowork to suggest more ideas for improvement. It created issue after issue. I got Code to work through them.

Now I see it.

Now I really see the power and the potential. I mean, I knew this, theoretically and practically. None of this is new to me. But chaining things together in this manner, today, that's what's really changing things for me.

It's essentially like having a web designer, editor and advisor on call, whenever I want. What do you think about this? Should I add a form to capture requests? What's missing from this section? How would you improve this?

Yes, I had to work a bit to set up the tooling and this workflow. But it's an indication of how things are going to develop.