Summary  
This chapter covers the concept of designing structured, reusable multi-step workflows (scan, compare, brief) to efficiently gather, synthesize, and deliver information for decision-making.

General domain of usage  
Business decision-making

### Core Concept

Research at work is not academic research. It's the _"I need to make a decision and I don't have time to read forty browser tabs"_ kind. This chapter gives you three recipes so that when you sit down to research anything, you know exactly which shape you're building and how to brief Cowork.

### How It Works (Step-by-Step)

**Step 1 - Recognize the three shapes**

- **Scan.** Broad survey. Lay of the land.
- **Compare.** Options side by side on the dimensions that matter.
- **Brief.** Decision-ready recommendation.

Scan and compare aren't standalone deliverables - they're the _inputs_. The thing you hand to your team, or save to act on later, is always a brief.

**Step 2 - Learn the SCAN recipe**

Four steps.

- **FRAME** - Question, scope, and depth.
- **SEARCH** - Parallel searches across web and connectors.
- **SYNTHESIZE** - Cluster findings. Note where sources disagree.
- **SURFACE** - Overview, organized, with citations on every claim.

Depth in the brief equals depth out of the scan. Be specific about how deep to go.

**Step 3 - Learn the COMPARE recipe**

Four steps.

- **SET CRITERIA** - Name what matters before you start looking.
- **GATHER** - Evidence per option, per criterion.
- **SCORE** - Where each wins. Where the tradeoffs are.
- **TABULATE** - Clean table, citation in every cell.

You set the criteria. Cowork can't guess your weighting.

**Step 4 - Learn the BRIEF recipe**

Four steps.

- **QUESTION** - The decision in one sentence. Not the topic - the decision.
- **EVIDENCE** - Pull in the scan, the compare, anything relevant.
- **RECOMMEND** - Take a position. With reasoning.
- **CAVEATS** - What would change the call. What's still uncertain.

This is the only one of the three that ships.

**Step 5 - Learn the three universal rules**

- **Cite as you go.** Attach the source the moment you make a claim, not after.
- **Verify what matters.** Numbers, names, dates, claims with stakes - spot-check.
- **Structure first.** Section headers before any prose. Then fill the skeleton.

### Why This Matters

Without a framework, research tasks bloat into meandering essays and never land as decisions. With these three recipes, every research request becomes a shaped, executable brief, and every deliverable ends with a real position taken.

### What Should Be Possible After This

- Name the three research patterns and identify which one fits a given task.
- Recite the four steps of each recipe.
- State the three universal rules that hold across all three.
- Recognize that scan and compare feed the brief, and the brief is what ships.


You’ve used Claude in a chat window. You’ve typed a question, gotten an answer, copy-pasted the result, and done the work yourself.
That model of AI has a ceiling. This course is about what happens when you stop asking Claude for instructions and start handing it the job.
Cowork is Claude running in sync with your computer. It can read your files, edit them, create new ones, connect to your Gmail and Calendar and Slack, run tasks on a schedule while you sleep, and hand back finished deliverables instead of instructions.
By the end of this course, you’ll have a working Cowork operating system — a personal setup of skills, connectors, scheduled routines, and a live dashboard that handles your daily admin in the background, so you spend your time on the work only you can do.
This documentation accompanies the five-section video course. Every chapter follows the same structure — a clear definition, the core concept, a step-by-step walkthrough, why it matters, and what should be possible after watching.
Prompts, templates, and worked examples are included throughout.
What You’ll Build
By the end of the course, you’ll have a working  Cowork operating system  — a personal system of skills, connectors, scheduled routines, and a live dashboard, all wired together inside Cowork to handle your daily admin in the background.
Concretely, you’ll leave with:
A working understanding of Chat, Cowork, and Code — and when to reach for each.
A set of connectors authorized (Gmail, Calendar, Slack, Drive, or whatever you actually use every day).
At least one custom skill you wrote yourself, encoding a workflow you do every week.
Three scheduled tasks firing on their own — a morning brief, an end-of-day inbox triage, a Friday client recap.
A live dashboard that shows your entire day on one page and refreshes from your connectors every time you open it.
The recipes to keep extending your system as your work evolves.

Get your bearings. What Cowork is, how it thinks, how to set up a safe workspace, and where its limits are.

The Research Patterns

Core Concept

How It Works (Step-by-Step)

Why This Matters

What Should Be Possible After This