I’ve spent the past few years working with tools like Alfred, Hazel, Automator, and Shortcuts, and have built out a number of workflows along the way. Lately, I’m noticing that Cowork can handle many of the same use cases, but with a much lower barrier to entry.
I’m curious how others are thinking about this. Where does Cowork fit into your current setup? Are you using it to extend what you’ve already built, or do you see it eventually replacing parts of that stack?
Each of these tools still does something unique, but Cowork seems to cover about 80% of what I need with far less friction.
I’ve never had tremendous success getting Hazel or Shortcuts to do exactly what I want them to, and have been frustrated with the amount of time I spend spinning my wheels trying to get something to work, only to throw my hands up in the air and just do it myself.
Now I work with Claude to purpose-build exactly the solution I need. Sometimes it’s just a python script I can run from the terminal as needed. Sometimes its a skill for Cowork to use. Sometimes it’s an Apple Script I can use in a particular app.
Sometimes it depends on the size of the job. For example, if I need to convert the format on just one or two media files, I’ll just fire up Permute. But if I need to process a whole batch of media files, and especially if I need to execute a multi-step process—e.g., join multiple MP3 files, convert them to M4b, and rename them following a specific rule—I’ll use script Claude wrote for me to get it done using ffmpeg and python.
Claude has volunteered to help me build a script library to get lots of routine file-related tasks done in lieu of resorting to an app or burning tokens using an AI agent.