CRAFT for Claude Cowork · Your First Session
Getting CRAFT is a link — free, ungated, a page away. This post isn’t about that. It’s about what we built underneath your first session, and why we built it like production software.
You know the first hour with a new tool. You land in a README that assumes you already know everything, and the documentation’s idea of “easy to get started” turns out to mean “the setup page exists — you’re the integration engineer now.” From the outside every framework’s onboarding looks the same, the way two cars both have headlights.
CRAFT for Claude Cowork took a different view: your first session is a piece of engineering, not a documentation problem. So the first-contact experience isn’t a help article bolted on at the end — it ships inside the framework as real, versioned recipes, built and maintained with the same process discipline as everything else in it. Here is roughly what one of them looks like from the inside.
Recipe header — the structure is real; identifiers shown are representative
status: released — part of the current library
mode_gate: tutorial-mode ON only — never appears in a normal session
tested: OFF-switch tested — stays out of sessions that don’t want it
purpose: meet a zero-knowledge first contact and route by intent
revised: like every recipe — version-numbered, updated as the framework moves
A version number. A tested mode-gate. A revision history. That is not how most tools describe their welcome mat — and that is the whole point. The onboarding is an artifact you could read, check, and watch change over time, because it was engineered rather than written. Every framework’s onboarding looks the same from the outside; this is what CRAFT’s looks like from the inside.
Three things we engineered instead of only documenting
Each one is a real, version-numbered recipe in the framework — not a blog post about how to get started.
A first-contact menu
The Starter Welcome recipe meets you at zero knowledge and routes you by what you actually want to do — not by whatever the docs happened to cover in whatever order.
Because it’s a recipe, it’s the same for everyone and improves for everyone when it’s revised.
A guided first session you feel, not read
You do a small, real piece of your own work — draft a note, sketch a plan — end the session, then open a fresh one and watch it pick up where you left off. The framework’s core design goal — your work carries forward — is something you see happen in session one, not something you’re asked to believe.
Tutorial mode with a real OFF switch
The guided layer is mode-gated. On, it teaches from inside your own project; off, it’s gone completely. That off-switch is deliberately tested, so the teaching stays out of sessions that don’t want it.
Each is a version-numbered recipe, maintained and revised like the rest of the framework — the same discipline that runs everything else in CRAFT, pointed at the one moment most tools leave to a README.
Riding Claude Cowork, arriving configured
Claude Cowork’s own promise is that you give it a goal and come back to polished results for your review. CRAFT rides that promise and, instead of handing you a setup to assemble, arrives as one: from your first conversation you already have a library of versioned recipes, official cookbooks, and the guided teaching layer above them in place. It’s working material from the start, not a configuration project — and the first session above is how you meet it.
Where to actually start
The getting-it part really is a link — CRAFT for Claude Cowork is free during beta, and the downloads page has the file and what’s in it. One honest prerequisite: CRAFT runs on Claude Cowork itself, so you need Cowork available in your Claude plan; CRAFT adds no cost, account, or gate on top of it. The beta page covers the beta itself, and the beginner series walks every step. Download it, connect a folder, and let the first session introduce itself. If CRAFT isn’t for you, you’ve lost minutes, not an afternoon.
No account needed. Free during beta. Already downloaded? The beginner series is your next step.
The honest bounds. CRAFT for Claude Cowork is itself in beta, and we say so plainly. AI can make mistakes — review anything important, and consequential decisions stay with you.
This post reflects the framework as it is today and gets updated as CRAFT evolves — recipe and cookbook counts on this site are kept approximate on purpose, because the framework changes faster than the copy does.
