Setup That Actually Sticks

Configure Once, Benefit Forever

Most Co-Work setups fail the same way: people start using it immediately, run a few tasks, get mediocre results, and conclude the tool is not as good as advertised. The problem is almost never the model. The problem is the setup.

Co-Work reads global instructions before every single task it executes. That means the quality of your global instructions has a compounding effect on every task you ever run. A thirty-minute investment in getting this right will improve thousands of future tasks. That is the highest-leverage thirty minutes in this entire course.

This module produces four concrete outputs: global instructions, a sandbox folder structure, a Business Brain document, and the dynamic reference that connects them. When you finish, Co-Work should be able to answer "Tell me about my business" accurately and specifically — without you typing a single word of context.

Global Instructions: Your Standing Orders

Global instructions are persistent context that Co-Work loads before every session, every task, every scheduled run. They are not conversation starters. They are permanent operating parameters — the equivalent of the onboarding document you give every new employee, except this employee reads it every single morning.

Three things belong in global instructions, and only three things. Anything else should live in a folder-level file (covered in Module 3) or a Business Brain document (covered below).

1. Business Context

Who you are. What you do. Your primary tools and platforms. The lens Co-Work should use to interpret every task you give it. This should be three to five sentences — specific enough to be useful, brief enough that it does not dominate the context on every task.

Example: "I run a boutique UX consulting firm. My clients are mid-market SaaS companies. My primary tools are Notion for documentation, Linear for project tracking, and Google Workspace for communication. I work alone with two part-time contractors."

2. Safety Guardrail (Non-Negotiable)

This is not optional. Co-Work has filesystem access. It has email access once you connect Gmail. It can take actions that cannot be undone — deleting files, sending messages, creating calendar events. Without a clear safety guardrail in your global instructions, Co-Work will execute these actions without asking.

3. Output Preferences

How you want information formatted by default. Bullet points or paragraphs? Detailed analysis or executive summary? Include sources or skip them? These preferences apply everywhere — you can override them per task, but having sensible defaults means most tasks produce useful output without adjustment.

The No-Delete Guardrail in Practice

Here is what happens without it: you ask Co-Work to "clean up my Downloads folder." Co-Work interprets "clean up" as "delete duplicates and old files." It deletes 847 files. Some of them were things you needed.

Here is what happens with it: Co-Work says "I found 847 files I could delete. Here is a summary by category. Confirm to proceed." You review. You confirm. Nothing irreversible happens without your knowledge.

The guardrail does not prevent Co-Work from doing the work. It prevents Co-Work from completing the work without your sign-off. That distinction is the entire safety model for the first three tiers of this course.

The Business Brain Document

Your global instructions give Co-Work a brief orientation. Your Business Brain gives it a complete briefing. The document contains everything Co-Work would need to know to represent your business accurately: who your customers are, what you sell, how you communicate, what your processes look like, who is on your team.

The key insight is dynamic loading. You do not paste the Business Brain into every task prompt. You add one line to your global instructions: "If I ask any business question, check ~/CoWork/Business/business-brain.md before responding." Co-Work reads it on demand — only when it needs it. This is far more token-efficient than hardcoding business context into every prompt.

What Goes in a Business Brain

Structure the document with these six sections as headers. Fill in whatever is real for you — partial information is better than none:

• About [Your Business] — one paragraph overview, founding context, mission
• Ideal Customer Profile — who you serve, their problems, what they have tried before
• Products / Services — what you offer, pricing (if comfortable), positioning
• Brand Voice and Tone — adjectives that describe your communication style; examples
• Key Processes and Tools — how you work, what stack you use, recurring workflows
• Team Members and Roles — names, roles, decision authority

The document does not need to be perfect on day one. Add to it as you use Co-Work. When a task produces output that seems off-brand, add a clarification to the Business Brain and re-run. Over months, it becomes genuinely comprehensive.

The Sandbox Folder

Before Co-Work can write files, save outputs, or organize anything, it needs a home base — a folder it has explicit permission to work within. Create this now, before you connect any integrations or run any real tasks.

Create ~/CoWork/ as your root. Inside it, create four subfolders:

• Inbox/ — things Co-Work receives or monitors
• Output/ — drafts, reports, generated files
• Skills/ — skill markdown files (used in Module 6)
• Business/ — Business Brain and other reference docs

Give Co-Work explicit permission to read and write within this folder in your global instructions. Expand folder permissions deliberately as trust increases — start narrow, not wide. This incremental trust model is important: it is much easier to expand permissions you started narrow than to recover from permissions you started broad.

Use Co-Work to Write Your Global Instructions

Here is the best shortcut in this module. Before you write a single word of your global instructions, run this prompt:

"Based on what you know about me from our conversations so far, what would you say are 3–4 sentences I should have as my general system instructions?"

Co-Work will draft them based on whatever context you have shared. Review, edit, and paste into Settings → General → Global Instructions. Then ask it to draft your Business Brain structure — it will generate the template and ask what to fill in.