CoWork for Distributors — Installation Tool

Install Claude Desktop to get access to CoWork

Skip this step if you already have Claude Desktop / CoWork installed.

1. Go to claude.com/download and download the desktop app for Mac or Windows.
2. Install it, then sign in with your Claude account.
3. No Claude account yet? Create one first at claude.ai — CoWork is a front-end, it doesn't replace Claude.

Open the zip file and point CoWork at this folder

1. Unzip the CoWork-for-Distributors zip. You should see a folder called CoWork-for-Distributors.
2. Open CoWork. Look at the left-most dropdown below the main chat box — depending on your version, it likely says "Work in a Project".
3. Drop that selection box down and choose CoWork-for-Distributors — the whole folder, not a subfolder.

Paste 2-CLAUDE.md into Global Instructions

File you need for this step

Download and open the file above (2-CLAUDE.md) and then follow the five steps listed below.

1. Copy everything in that file, top to bottom.
2. In the Claude desktop app, click your name (bottom-left), then Settings.
3. Select CoWork from the left-hand menu.
4. Click Edit at the bottom right, under Global Instructions.
5. Paste the full contents in, then click Save.

Install the Setup Plugin (one drag-and-drop)

This loads every setup skill — Setup Company, Setup User, Personal Assistant, System Review, First Week Guide, Knowledge Base Health Check, plus the scheduled-task helpers (Daily Briefing, Vendor Pulse, Account Drift Detector, System Dashboard). They ship as a single plugin file, bundled below.

Files you need for this step

1. Open CoWork. Click Customize (sliders icon, near the top of the left navigation).
2. Open the Plugins section.
3. Drag tenexity-setup.plugin onto the Plugins panel — or click + → Add plugin from file and select it.
4. CoWork shows a one-time install confirmation. Click Install.
5. If any skill doesn't appear immediately, fully quit CoWork (Cmd+Q on Mac, not just close the window) and reopen.

Say "set up the company" (or "set up my profile")

Back in the chat, type one of these depending on your situation:

You're the admin (GM, owner, designated company admin) and this is a fresh workspace

set up the company

Runs for ~15 minutes: company name, branches, ERP, top vendors, customer mix, voice rules, operational rhythm.

You're an employee and your admin already populated the COMPANY layer

set up my profile

Runs for ~5 minutes: your name, role, branch, tenure, individual voice, priorities, and pain points.

Not sure which case you're in?

set up

Claude checks the state of the workspace and routes you to the right skill.

Answer honestly and briefly. The skills write everything into your ABOUT ME/ files. When setup finishes, the gate file ABOUT ME/first-run.md is automatically overwritten with a SETUP COMPLETE marker.

Open your Distributor OS Dashboard

Your workspace ships with a Distributor OS Dashboard — one screen showing your whole branch at a glance: today's top three moves, inventory and dead stock, margin trend, vendor and rebate status, and AR aging, all in one tabbed view.

To open it, ask Claude:

open my Distributor OS dashboard

It loads RESOURCES/DISTRIBUTOR-OS/distributor-os.html right inside CoWork — nothing to install. There's a Setup tab inside it to rename the dashboard and relabel tabs for your company.

Run the First Week Guide

After setup completes, the highest-leverage next step. Five days, five real pieces of output you'll actually use:

Trigger it with:

start the first week guide

Each day is one focused session — pause between days if you need to. Day 4 is the one most distributors remember: most surface $250K–$3M of working capital sitting on shelves, depending on size.

Tips and Tricks for Using CoWork

Before any prompt that matters — a customer letter, a QBR draft, a carry-line review, anything where the output would be costly to get wrong — type this line:

Ask me clarifying questions to ensure we are aligned.

Claude will pause, ask what it needs to know, and only begin once you've answered. This is the single most useful habit new users learn in their first week.

For quick lookups and trivial drafts, skip this — just ask directly.

More detail in the Prompting Cookbook — grab it from Downloads & folders.

Setting up for multiple employees

Solo operator or owner-only setup? Skip this — just run Setup Company and Setup User back-to-back on your own machine.

The two-layer model

ABOUT ME/COMPANY/ describes the business — branches, ERP, vendors, voice rules, tools. Same content for every employee, populated once by the admin. ABOUT ME/USER/ describes each individual — role, voice, priorities, memory. Different per employee.

Everyone reads from the same COMPANY layer. Everyone writes to their own USER layer.

Recommended pattern

1. Admin downloads the framework first and runs the company-level setup once.
2. Admin places the framework in cloud-synced storage — OneDrive, Google Drive, SharePoint, Dropbox.
3. Admin runs set up the company — the populated COMPANY files now live in the shared folder.
4. Each employee points their own CoWork at the same shared folder, signs in with their own Claude account, and pastes 2-CLAUDE.md into their own Global Instructions.
5. Each employee runs set up my profile — about 5 minutes each.

Privacy

Anything tagged [private] in an employee's log or memory file stays private — System Review explicitly skips those entries in company-visible reports.

Multi-admin operations

For most distributors a single admin is fine. Larger or multi-region operations can split ownership of ABOUT ME/COMPANY/ files across roles — e.g. controller owns tools-and-context.md, GM owns company-profile.md, marketing owns voice-and-writing-rules.md.

Adding more plugins later

The bundled Setup plugin from Step 4 is all you need to start. Five specialist coaches are an optional, deeper layer in the Tenexity marketplace.

Connect to the marketplace (one time, ~60 seconds)

1. Inside CoWork, click Customize → Plugins.
2. Click + next to Personal plugins and select Add marketplace.
3. Paste this identifier and click Sync: tenexity/cowork-distributor-plugins
4. Click Sync again to confirm the standard third-party safety notice (Anthropic shows this for every non-Anthropic marketplace).

Install in this order

They read pasted ERP data, no integration required. They never invent numbers and never execute on your behalf.

What to do if something breaks

All downloads & folders

The files below are embedded directly in this HTML file — they download even if you're viewing this away from the original folder. Folder links open the live folder and only work while this file stays inside CoWork-for-Distributors/ (they're relative links).

Core install files

Reference guides

Folders — full workspace map

Support

• Getting started: say set up the company (admin) or set up my profile (employee) in a fresh CoWork session, after selecting the folder and installing the setup plugin.
• Stuck: say do a system health check — Claude reads everything and reports what's wrong.
• Questions about the framework: email cowork@tenexity.ai.
• Questions about CoWork the platform: claude.com/download.

What this framework does and doesn't do

Does: acts as your AI operating system across the business, remembers context/voice/decisions session to session, drafts emails/quotes/vendor letters/QBR prep/dead-stock analyses, applies your writing rules, produces a monthly System Review, maintains distributor knowledge bases, keeps its own memory tidy.

Doesn't, out of the box: connect directly to your ERP or manufacturer portals (paste exports/screenshots instead — ask about a live MCP connection at cowork@tenexity.ai), send emails on your behalf (drafts only), or invent numbers.

About the framework and Tenexity

One-time fee, no subscription, no login, no remote cloud — everything lives in this folder. CoWork the platform is a separate product by Agency Enterprises; pricing at claude.com/download. Tenexity participates in the Anthropic referral programme.

Want to talk? Book 20 minutes or email cowork@tenexity.ai.