Staying current
On why upgrading is a small gamble everywhere else — and why it doesn’t have to be one here.
A lot of us are running something a version behind on purpose — the last upgrade stepped on a setup that finally worked, so the next one can wait. CRAFT for Claude Cowork takes that calculation off the table by keeping two things in separate folders: the framework, which an upgrade replaces, and your work, which it doesn’t open.
The update you keep meaning to install
There’s a version of this everyone knows. A new release is out, it has things you want, and you still don’t install it — because the last time an update landed, it stepped on something you’d customized, and you spent the evening putting it back. So the badge sits there. “Later” becomes a habit, and before long you’re deliberately running something old on a tool you use every day, trading the improvements away for the peace of not touching a setup that works.
Why it’s a gamble everywhere else
The reason upgrading feels risky is usually structural: the tool and the things you’ve done to it live in the same place. Your settings, your tweaks, your work all sit interleaved with the parts an update wants to replace, so every upgrade has to thread the needle — keep your stuff, swap theirs — and every so often it doesn’t. Read across products and the promise is always the same: “easy updates,” “seamless upgrades.” The words are identical the way two cars both list a warranty; what they don’t tell you is what happens to the hours you put into making the thing yours.
The difference is two folders
CRAFT keeps the framework and your work physically apart, in two separate top-level folders. One holds the framework itself and is read-only — you don’t edit it, you replace it to upgrade. The other holds your work, and an upgrade doesn’t open it — and that writable side is where your own customizations live too, the settings and structure you’d hate to redo. So updating is a folder swap: the new version drops in where the old framework was, and the folder with your work in it is simply not part of the transaction. Keeping those files out of the swap is one half of it; the other half is the honest one — if a new framework version ever doesn’t get along with the work already in your project, rolling back is the same folder swap in reverse, with the previous framework dropped back where it was. A built-in upgrade check confirms your work folder came through the swap untouched, and the exact steps walk through the swap, the check, and the rollback. Nothing about this happens on its own, either — nothing is pushed to your machine; you update when you decide to, or not at all.
An upgrade replaces the framework folder and leaves the folder with your work in it alone — the two are never part of the same swap.
A project before and after an upgrade — structure real, details invented
my-project/
CRAFT Core Files/ v.b0007 → v.b0008 (this folder is replaced)
CRAFT Project Files/ your work (this folder is not opened)
The version labels are illustrative; the arrangement — framework in one folder, your work in another, only the first one swapped — is the real one.
A checkup before there’s a mystery
Separation is the big thing; the small thing next to it is a way to look under the hood on purpose. CRAFT ships built-in diagnostics — the Two-Folder Doctor — that detect and repair the framework’s known failure modes: a check you run before there’s a mystery to solve, rather than after a morning lost to one. Its subject is the framework, not your work.
An upgrade you have to brace for is one you’ll keep putting off.
Why it’s built this way
Keeping the part you can replace away from the part you can’t is an old habit from people who maintain systems for a living: you don’t mingle the thing you ship with the thing the user made, because the day you have to update one, you don’t want to be holding your breath about the other. CRAFT is built by one person who works that way by default. The two-folder layout isn’t a trick; it’s that discipline turned into where the files go.
So you actually stay current
This is the quiet payoff: with nothing to weigh before an upgrade, you actually take it — and you’re on the current version instead of one you were afraid to leave. The two-folder layout is right there in any project the first time you look; staying current goes back to being what it should be, a quick swap you don’t think twice about.
The best time to learn that an upgrade leaves your work alone is before you have work you’d hate to lose. CRAFT is free to download during beta; put something real on it, and the next update will show you the folder swap for what it is.
Free during beta. The download is ungated — no account, no email, no checkout. CRAFT for Claude Cowork runs on Claude Cowork, so you’ll need Cowork available in your Claude plan; CRAFT adds no cost, account, or gate on top of it. More on what it is
CRAFT for Claude Cowork is an early framework, in beta, and AI can make mistakes — review anything that matters before you rely on it. Keeping your work in a separate folder removes a common way an upgrade goes wrong; it isn’t a promise that nothing can ever go wrong, and updates are a deliberate step you choose to take, not something pushed to you.
