A structured methodology for setting up Anthropic's desktop AI so it knows your actual work — its files, its rhythm, and the things it must never touch.
Paraclet — whether Cowork or Hermes — configures Claude to come alongside your work. Thinking AI is the other half: it teaches you to actually think with it — to brief it well, judge what comes back, and direct it like a capable partner instead of a search box.
Buy once and you get the book as a PDF and a members' reader in your browser, where every exercise is alive: type a prompt and a real answer comes back, on the page, while you read.
One purchase · PDF download + the live in-browser reader · access by a one-time sign-in link.
Learn to think with Claude — briefing, judgement, and direction, in plain language for anyone.
The in-browser reader makes every exercise real — your prompts get genuine answers as you go.
Then Cowork or Hermes configures Claude to come alongside your real work.
Cowork is Anthropic's desktop AI coworker — an agent that reads, edits, and creates files in approved folders on your computer, runs multi-step tasks autonomously, and connects to outside services through plugins. It is powerful, and it is consequential.
A bad setup produces an agent that helpfully edits the wrong things. A good setup produces an agent that becomes one of the most useful tools you own. Paraclet exists for the difference between the two.
Paraclet is a way of interviewing you about your work and turning the answers into a configured, trustworthy AI helper. It comes in two editions — built for two genuinely different needs. You've landed on the Cowork edition; here's how it compares to Hermes, so you know you're in the right place.
Designs an aligned executive AI agent that understands your whole business.
An identity-driven interview. You're not setting up a tool — you're designing who an executive agent should be and what it should stand for: its personality, your origin story, strategy, operations, marketing, finances, and how it's governed. The agent that emerges can eventually help run real business decisions, within the values and boundaries you set.
Configures Anthropic's Cowork desktop AI for the work in front of you.
A workflow-driven interview. You're mapping what work you need help with and what's off-limits: your files, your repetitive tasks, your research, the chaos you've been avoiding. The outcome is a scoped, monitored Cowork setup running on three real pieces of your work — practical help, set up safely, soon.
Not sure whether you want Hermes or Cowork? Answer these and we'll tell you which is the better starting point — and we'll say so plainly, even if it's not the edition you landed on.
This is one of roughly seventy questions in the full framework. Type a real answer — Paraclet replies the way it would in a real setup interview.
"What computer work feels like a waste of your time — the part you'd most want to hand to someone else if you could?"
Who you are, what device and plan you're on, which vertical your work falls into, and how cautious you'd like us to be. Sets the variables everything downstream depends on.
Your working day, where your files live, what's chaotic, what repeats, what wastes your time. We make the work visible before proposing any solution.
One of four branches — research and professional, church and ministry, home and household, or general. The questions get specific to the actual shape of your work.
Approved folders, off-limits data, sensitive-data declaration, approval-required actions. The most important phase. Cowork is granted nothing before this is done.
Three concrete first Projects — one low-stakes confidence-builder, one high-value pain-point, one ongoing maintenance. Instructions written, success defined, review booked.
Delegation style, escalation triggers, which external connectors to set up now versus later, and the two-week review schedule. By the end you know exactly how to use Cowork tomorrow.
Paraclet has four branches, each with vertical-specific questions and safety defaults. We use the one that matches the work you do.
For academics, independent researchers, consultants, journalists, lawyers, and analysts whose work is reading and synthesizing source material into structured outputs. The strongest Cowork use case — and where Paraclet pays back fastest.
For pastors, ministry staff, worship leaders, and church administrators. Carries the most careful safety treatment of any vertical.
For household administration — bills, documents, family schedules, photo organization, and smart-home documentation.
For freelancers, small-business owners, and roles that don't fit the three named verticals. The questions adapt; the discipline stays the same.
Cowork is configured and running on three real pieces of your work, each with persistent instructions, defined success criteria, and a folder scope you trust.
You know exactly which folders Cowork can touch, which it cannot, which categories of information require special handling, and which actions always escalate to you.
Every decision captured in a configuration profile you keep — vertical, scope, safety rules, project instructions, escalation triggers. Re-deployable, auditable, yours.
You know when to give Cowork detailed instructions, when to let standing context carry the work, when to ask for a plan, and when to escalate to a human.
A two-week check-in where each Project is reviewed against its success criteria — and pulled back if it didn't work. Pulling back is a legitimate outcome, not a failure.
Cowork's role expands on evidence of reliable work, not optimism. By the end of the engagement, expansion is something you authorize — not something that drifts.
Most AI rollouts start with the tool and look for somewhere to use it. Paraclet starts the other way around: a structured discovery of how your business actually runs — the systems, the data, the manual workarounds, the places people quietly lose hours — and only then designs the right edition around the real problem.
When systems don't talk to each other, people become the integration — re-keying the same figures into accounting, stock, and the spreadsheet that ties them together. The Cowork edition configures a desktop AI to do that connective work: reconciling data across systems, turning messy inputs into clean reports, and handling the document grind, inside boundaries you define.
Some problems aren't a task — they're a way of running the business. The Hermes edition designs an aligned executive agent that holds the whole shape of your operation: its strategy, its processes, its governance, and the judgment calls that recur. It advises and acts within the values and limits you set, growing into a trusted operating partner over time.
Many businesses begin with Cowork for fast, concrete relief, then grow into Hermes as trust builds. Discovery tells us which to start with — and we'll say so plainly.
If two or three of these feel like your business, there's almost certainly time and money leaking somewhere a configured AI could help. Discovery finds exactly where.
Your accounting software and your stock system hold the same data but don't share it — so someone keeps both in sync by hand.
The same figures get typed into three places. Every re-entry is a chance for the numbers to drift apart.
Work moves between tools by copy-paste, export-import, or "send it over and I'll add it." The seams are where things get lost.
Month-end means someone stitching numbers together from four sources into a spreadsheet that's out of date by the time it's done.
Only one person knows how a process really works. When they're away — or they leave — it stalls.
A mistyped figure or a missed step surfaces weeks later, after it's already cost something.
We don't quote a solution off a sales call. We earn the right to recommend by understanding the problem properly first. Three stages, in order.
A structured interview that surfaces your pain points, maps your systems and data flows, and finds where time and accuracy are leaking. This is where the questionnaire below begins the work — before we even meet.
We turn raw pain points into a defined problem and a proposed design: which edition fits, what it would be configured to do, what stays off-limits, and what success would look like in weeks, not someday.
Your responses feed our internal research process, which probes deeper — modelling the workflows, pressure-testing assumptions, and asking the follow-up questions that turn a good idea into a design we'd stake our name on.
Why the questionnaire is gated. Discovery only works if it's a real collaboration. The questionnaire below opens once you've booked a discovery appointment and agreed to engage with the full process — discovery, scoping, and research. It's not a hurdle; it's how we make sure the work is worth your time and ours.
Two steps unlock the questionnaire. Your answers generate an initial research brief — a first read on where the problems are and the questions worth digging into — which primes your booked session and feeds our research process.
A short call to meet, confirm fit, and frame the work. The questionnaire is the homework that makes that call count.
Book the appointment →Discovery, scoping, and research are collaborative. This works when you're in it with us.
Complete both steps above to continue.
Answer in plain language — as much or as little as is useful. There are no wrong answers; the gaps and the frustrations are exactly what we're looking for. Everything here is treated as confidential.
This is a first pass. Your booked session and our internal research process go several layers deeper — this brief is the starting point we'll build on together.
Paraclet isn't a sign-up form or a self-serve funnel. Every engagement is conducted by a real practitioner from Roger That! — Tech Defender, a tech practice built for people who are tired of feeling betrayed or bewildered by their own technology.
The hard part of an AI coworker was never installing it. It's configuring it so it's genuinely useful and genuinely safe — knowing what to scope in, what to keep out, and what to never automate. That judgment comes from doing the work, not from a wizard.
— Roger That! · Tech Defender
Installing Cowork takes five minutes. Configuring it so it actually helps — and doesn't quietly edit the wrong files — is the real work. Paraclet maps your specific workflow, sets the boundaries before granting any access, and stands up three working Projects with a two-week review. You're paying for the judgment about what to scope in, what to keep out, and what to never automate. Most people who skip this step end up with an impressive tool they don't trust and stop using.
Safety is the spine of the method, not an afterthought. Cowork is granted access to nothing until Phase 4, where we explicitly define which folders it may touch, which are off-limits, which information needs special handling, and which actions must always ask you first. Other people's information — family, clients, congregants, patients — is off-limits by default. You can name every boundary before anything is connected.
That's exactly who this is for. Cowork was built for people who aren't developers, and Paraclet is a conversation, not a configuration screen. You describe your work in plain language; the technical decisions are handled for you and explained as we go. If you can talk about what wastes your time, you can do this.
By the end of two weeks you'll have three Projects running on real work, each with a defined success measure. We deliberately start small — one low-stakes confidence-builder, one high-value pain-point, one ongoing task — and expand only on evidence that it's working. Quick wins first, trust earned before scope grows.
Yes. Cowork runs inside the Claude desktop app on a paid Claude plan, and the app needs to be open while it works. If you're heavy on long, file-intensive tasks, we'll talk about which plan tier fits during the consultation — it's part of the intake.
If you want practical help with the work in front of you — files, tasks, research — Cowork is your starting point. If you're a founder who wants an AI that understands and helps steer your whole business, that's Hermes. Not sure? The four-question chooser above will give you an honest recommendation, and the consultation is free regardless of which way you lean.
Thirty minutes. We map what you're actually trying to do, whether Cowork is the right tool, and what a Paraclet engagement would look like for your specific work. No pressure, no obligation, no sales script.