Cowork Guide — Glossary
A one-line, plain-English meaning for every term the cowork guide leans on. Skim it before a chapter, or jump back here when a word stops carrying its weight.
A
Agent. An AI given a pattern to match, run across multiple steps you cannot fully script up front.
Artifact. An output the workspace produces — a report, a draft, a diff, a memory entry. Interchangeable with "output" when used in prose.
C
.claude/ folder. The hidden folder in your project where Cowork keeps rules, skills, agents, and memory. The leading dot means your computer shows it only when you ask.
Claude. The AI model. Referred to by name throughout the guide.
CLAUDE.md (also called "INSTRUCTIONS"). The main briefing file for a Project. Attached to every prompt you send in that Project.
Cowork. Claude's "persistent workspace" product: a folder on your computer plus a Claude Project that share state across sessions.
F
Frontmatter. The block at the very top of a markdown file that lists its title, date, and tags.
G
Glossary. This page.
H
Human in the loop. A checkpoint where a person reviews AI output before it moves forward. Replaces the older "approval gate" / "review gate" / "quality gate" vocabulary.
K
KB / Knowledge Base. The reference section of the site, as opposed to the blog.
M
Memory entry. A saved note Cowork reads on future runs. Replaces "Memory bucket" / "Memory store".
P
Pattern-match. How the AI works under the hood: it predicts the next likely word or step based on patterns, not by reasoning or understanding.
Pipeline. A sequence of steps where each step's output becomes the next step's input, with a human in the loop between each pair.
Project (Claude Project). A configured workspace in Claude with its own CLAUDE.md, rules, and memory.
Prompt. A message you send to Claude. In Cowork, your prompt is combined with the CLAUDE.md and any active rules before Claude responds.
R
Rule. A constraint (stored in .claude/rules/) applied to every output in a Project.
S
Scheduled Task. A prompt set to run automatically on a regular rhythm (daily, weekly, etc.).
Skill. A saved, reusable procedure stored in .claude/skills/. A named way of doing a recurring task, invoked with a slash-command.
Slash-command. A shortcut typed in the chat (starts with /) that runs a saved helper like /skill-creator.
Stacking (or: combining rules). Using more than one rule at once; rules compose when their file paths include the request's context.
W
Wave. A round of parallel work in a multi-step process.
Business acronyms
The guide sweeps these through in prose; here they are spelled out in one place.
- SLA — service-level agreement.
- CSAT — customer satisfaction score.
- CTA — call to action.
- ICP — ideal customer profile.
- BANT — Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline; a sales qualification checklist.
- MEDDIC — a sales qualification framework (Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion).
- ACV — annual contract value.
- AE — account executive.
- MQL — marketing qualified lead.
- SQL — sales qualified lead (in this guide; elsewhere SQL is a database query language — context decides).
- ERP — enterprise resource planning system.
- CRM — customer relationship management system.
- SOC — Security Operations Center.
- SOP — standard operating procedure.
Spot a term missing? It probably deserves a gloss in the chapter where it first appears — or an addition here.