01What this actually is
Claude helps you do a task that's already in front of you.
A spreadsheet, a reconciliation, a contract, a pile of invoices, a summary. You
ask, it works on real files on your computer, you check the result. It only runs when you ask.
Nothing happens on its own and nothing runs overnight.
What it's good at
- Reading a stack of documents and pulling the same fields out of each one
- Building spreadsheets with live formulas
- Comparing two versions of anything and telling you what changed
- Reformatting an export into a template
- Summarizing something long before a meeting
- Tedious, careful work that a person gets bored doing
What it cannot do
- Log into Yardi (export first, then hand it the file)
- Send email on your behalf
- Publish to the Portfolio Map or any Tucker site
- Change the shared database
- Run on a schedule or overnight
- See any folder you haven't connected
02Setup, step by step
Six steps, start to finish, about fifteen minutes. You don't need to know
anything technical. Just do them in order.
Accept your invitation email
- Look in your Outlook inbox for an email from Claude or Anthropic
inviting you to join Tucker's organization.
- If it isn't there after a few minutes, check your Junk Email folder. It often
lands there the first time.
- Click the Join or Accept invitation button inside the email.
- Your browser opens. Create a password when asked, or choose Continue with
Microsoft if you'd rather use your normal Tucker sign-in.
Important: use your @tuckerdevelopment.com address. Not a
personal Gmail, not a home email. If you already have your own Claude account on a personal
email, that account is separate and stays exactly as it is. This is a second, work one.
Download the Claude desktop app
Click this button:
Download Claude for Windows
If the button doesn't work, type this into your browser's address bar:
claude.com/download
- On that page, click Download for Windows.
- You may see two Windows choices, x64 and ARM64. Pick x64. That's
the right one for essentially every Tucker laptop. (Only pick ARM64 if you know you have
a Surface Pro X or similar.)
- When it finishes downloading, look at the bottom of your browser window or open your
Downloads folder, and double-click the file that just downloaded.
- Click through the installer. There's nothing to decide, just keep clicking
Next and then Finish.
- Claude opens. Sign in with the same Tucker email from step 1.
On a Mac? Same page, click Download for macOS instead, then
drag the Claude icon into your Applications folder when it asks.
Use the app, not the website
This matters more than it sounds. There are three ways to reach Claude, and they are not
equivalent:
- The desktop app — the program you just installed. Your files are read
on your own computer. This is what Tucker uses.
- The website (claude.ai in a browser) — files get uploaded to Anthropic's
servers to be worked on.
- The phone app — same as the website.
All three are the same Claude and your login works on all of
them. For anything with Tucker files in it, use the desktop app. The website is fine
for a general question that doesn't involve our documents.
Switch from Chat to Cowork
- In the Claude app, look at the message box at the bottom of the window, the
place where you'd type.
- There's a small selector there that says Chat. Click it and choose
Cowork.
- Below the message box, tick the box that says Work in a folder.
- A file browser opens. Navigate to a Dropbox folder you actually work in and select
it.
- A window asks whether Claude can read, change, and delete files in that folder. Click
Allow. It only applies to the folder you just picked.
What "connecting a folder" means: you're pointing Claude at one
drawer of the filing cabinet. It can see everything in that drawer and nothing anywhere
else on the computer. Start with one or two folders. Fewer folders means faster and
more accurate answers. You can add more any time.
You don't need to download anything first. If a Dropbox file shows
a blue cloud icon it's stored online to save space on your computer. Claude pulls it down
automatically the moment it reads it, usually in well under a second. Nothing gets skipped.
The only difference is that the very first read of a folder can be a little slower.
Set the Tucker house rules, once
This one is worth doing carefully because you only ever do it once. It teaches Claude
Tucker's standards so you don't have to repeat them every time.
- Click Settings in the Claude app.
- Choose Cowork.
- Find Global instructions and click Edit.
- Type or paste in the text below.
- Click Save.
At the start of every session, read the files "Tucker House Rules.md" and
the starter-tasks file with my name on it, both in the Dropbox folder
CORPORATE FOLDERS\Claude Code\cowork. Follow those rules for everything you do for me.
Never round money. Rent always shows two decimals. Use live Excel formulas, never typed-in
values. Write in plain English with no em-dashes. If you are unsure of a number, say so
rather than guessing.
Now those rules apply to every Cowork session
automatically, forever, without you thinking about it again.
Check your permission setting
In the message box there's a mode selector with three choices. This controls how
much Claude checks with you before changing a file.
- Manual — stops and asks you before each action. Slowest, safest. Start
here for your first week.
- Auto — works through the task, checking its own actions for safety as it
goes. This is where most people settle.
- Skip — no pauses, no checks. Do not use this on Tucker files.
Set it to Manual to begin with. Once you've watched it work a few
times and you trust what it's doing, move to Auto. There is no reason to ever use Skip.
How to know it worked. Start a Cowork session with a folder connected and ask:
"List the files you can see in this folder and tell me what the Tucker House Rules say about
rounding money." If it lists your real files and tells you never to round, you are fully
set up.
If Claude says it can't find your files. Work down this list in order:
- Is Dropbox running? Look for the Dropbox icon near the clock in the bottom-right
of your screen. If it isn't there, open Dropbox and let it finish syncing.
- Did you connect the right folder? Ask Claude "which folder are you working in?"
and check it against what you expected.
- Are you in Cowork, not Chat? Chat mode can't reach your files at all. Check the
selector in the message box.
- Is the desktop app open? It has to stay open while a task that touches your files
is running.
03Access — what Claude can and can't see
Claude has no permissions of its own. It sees exactly what your Dropbox account
already lets you see, and nothing more.
There is no setting anywhere in Claude that says "Lindsey may read this folder but not write
to it." That's handled in Dropbox, where it already is. Three settings, three outcomes:
Not shared with you
Claude can't see it
Never reaches your machine. As far as Claude is concerned, the folder does
not exist.
Shared — can view
Read only
Claude can read it and physically cannot change it. Enforced by
Windows, not by Claude choosing to behave.
Shared — can edit
Full access
Same as today. This is where your own working folders sit.
Connect only what the task needs. Not because Claude will misbehave, but because a
session pointed at four folders is faster and more accurate than one pointed at forty. If
you're working on a budget, connect the budget folder.
04How to ask
Plain language. No special syntax, no keywords.
Say what you want and what "done" looks like
Vague in, vague out. Compare:
"Look at these invoices."
"Read every invoice in this folder and build me a spreadsheet with vendor,
invoice number, date, amount, property, and suggested GL account. Flag anything you're not
confident coding."
Ask it to show its work
Adding "tell me where each number came from" turns an answer you have to trust into one
you can check in thirty seconds.
Correct it mid-task
You don't need to start over. "No, use the lease date not the Yardi date" works fine and it
adjusts from there.
Ask what's missing
Ending with "what did you have to guess at?" is the single most useful habit. It will
tell you, and that's where your attention belongs.
Check the work. Claude is fast and it is confident, and those are not the same as
correct. Every number that leaves your desk is still yours. Spot-check anything that matters,
especially totals.
05What each of you might start with
There's a file in the cowork folder with your name on it and more detail. This is
the short version.
| Person | Function | Start with |
|---|
| Rich |
CEO — contract review & redline |
Compare two versions of a contract and get told what changed. Summarize a contract
before a call. Redline with tracked changes you can accept or reject. |
| Joanne |
Office manager — corporate accounting |
Insurance schedules across entities sorted by renewal date. Payroll tracking with
changes flagged. Check register with duplicate payments caught. |
| Teresa |
Accounting — DWS / South Loop |
Invoices turned into a coded spreadsheet. First-pass variance explanations off the
budget comparison. Yardi export reformatted into the DWS template. |
| Lindsey |
Budgets / property admin |
Operating budget worksheets built off prior-year actuals with live formulas. COI
tracking sorted by expiration. Tenant chase lists off the AR aging. |
06Tucker house rules
The full list is in Tucker House Rules.md, which Claude reads. These
are the ones you'll notice.
- Never round money. Rent always carries two decimals.
- Live formulas, never typed-in values. If it hands you a spreadsheet with hardcoded
numbers where formulas belong, tell it to redo it. It will.
- Dates always come from the lease.
- Plain English. No jargon, no consultant voice, no em-dashes.
- Tucker Navy and Gold on anything that gets seen outside the company. The brand is
"Tucker," never "Tucker Development."
- It versions up, and the live file never changes its name. Before it changes a Word
or Excel file, it copies the current one to the next version number and then works on the
live file. So
Wheatland CAM Rec.xlsx is always the current one, and
Wheatland CAM Rec v3.xlsx sitting next to it is the one before. Anything older
moves into an Archive\ folder right there in the same folder. You get the last
two versions in the open so you can run a redline or take a quick look, without digging
through Dropbox's version menu.
- Never work from a file in
Archive\. Those are history. They are there
to compare against and to recover from, never to pull a number out of. Always take figures
from the live file.
- When it isn't sure, it should say so. If it sounds confident about something it
couldn't possibly know, push back.
07Getting help
Something isn't working: ask Kate. Nine times out of ten it's the offline-files setting
in step 4.
You want it to do something it can't: also worth raising. Some of those are genuinely
off limits, and some just mean it needs to be built properly rather than done by hand.
The graduation rule. If you find yourself doing the same manual job a third month
running, that's the signal it should be built instead of repeated. Bring it to Kate or Aaron
and it moves up a tier — from something you do with Claude's help to something that just
happens.