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) — explicitly ask Claude to read it before working, then review the result against those 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 — commit reviewed changes so they are diffable and recoverable; coordinate concurrent writers and resolve conflicts.
FAQ
Does Claude respect the vault conventions?
Put the conventions in AGENTS.md and explicitly ask the session to read them before editing. Instruction loading differs between clients; verify the changes instead of assuming that a file guarantees compliance.
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.