Why this pairing works
Cowork's deliverables are overwhelmingly markdown: research reports, plans, specs, drafts. By default they scatter — a download here, a conversation attachment there. Point Cowork at your note.md vault instead, and its output lands where your reading loop lives: every report gets a home, every read-through leaves a sidecar of judgment, and your next Cowork session can be told to read those sidecars first.
Setup
- In the Claude desktop app, connect your vault folder to the Cowork session ("Add folder").
- Add an
AGENTS.mdat the vault root (conventions summary: llms-full.txt) — Claude reads it automatically and follows the house rules. - Ask Claude to save deliverables into the vault, e.g.
research/2026-07-11-competitor-scan.md. - Read them in note.md; your highlights and notes save to sidecar
.note.mdfiles. - Next session, one line: "Read the .note.md sidecars for the reports you wrote last week and address my margins." The loop closes.
Tips
- Ask Claude to use
[[wikilinks]]and the[[yyyy-MM-dd]]date format so its documents join your vault's link graph instead of floating outside it. - Keep the vault in git — Cowork writes are then diffable, and its file-versioning plus yours never fight.
FAQ
Does Claude respect the vault conventions?
Yes, if you put them in an AGENTS.md at the folder root — Claude Code and Cowork read agent instruction files as standard practice.
Can Claude read my annotations?
That's the point. Sidecar .note.md files are plain markdown; ask any session to read them and it will see exactly what you highlighted and questioned.