Four Cowork agents that reclaim up to 10 hours a week, eliminate the most repetitive work in your day, and create a self-improving operating system for how you run your finance function.
This is not four isolated tools. It is one CFO operating system with four entry points. Each agent reads from the same Google Drive structure, feeds into the next, and compounds over time as your archive deepens.
No code. No technical team. No new software subscriptions. Just Claude, Google Workspace, and this playbook.
If you're new to Claude Cowork, this is the part that trips most people up. The agents aren't apps you install — they're instructions you give Claude inside Cowork. Here's exactly how it works.
Claude Cowork is a free desktop app from Anthropic. Download it at claude.ai/download and sign in with your Claude account. It runs on Mac and Windows. Once open, you'll see a simple interface — a text box where you describe what you want Claude to do.
In Claude Cowork, you can save reusable agents — think of them as saved playbooks Claude can refer back to. For each agent in this guide, you'll create one saved agent and paste the prompt from this page into it.
In Cowork, click New Agent → give it a name (e.g. "Morning CFO Brief") → paste the full prompt from this playbook into the instructions field → save it. Do this once per agent. You don't need to re-paste the prompt every time.
For the Morning Brief and Weekly Planning agents, you set a schedule inside Cowork and they fire automatically. You don't need to do anything. Your Daily Brief will be waiting in Google Drive before you open your laptop.
In Cowork, open the saved agent → click Schedule → set the time and days → save. That's the entire setup. Cowork handles the rest while your computer is on.
For the Email Drafter and 1:1 Prep agents, you trigger them with a plain English instruction inside Cowork. Open Cowork, select the saved agent, and type what you need. You don't re-paste the prompt — Claude already has it. You just tell it the specifics.
Here are the exact trigger phrases to use — copy these as-is or adapt to your own style:
You don't need to use these exact phrases. Claude understands natural language — be as casual or specific as you like. The more context you give (sender name, subject, filename), the better the output.
Once triggered, Cowork takes control of your desktop. You'll see it open Chrome, navigate to Gmail or Drive, read content on screen, and start working — exactly the way you would, just faster. You can watch it run or minimise the window. When it's done, it will have produced whatever the prompt instructed — a doc in Drive, a draft in Gmail compose, a brief on screen.
Every weekday at 7:00 AM, this agent reads your overnight Gmail, scans your day, and produces a single ready-to-read Google Doc — your daily command center. You arrive knowing exactly what the day requires before you've touched a single email.
Every Monday at 6:30 AM — before your Morning Brief — this agent reads last week's daily briefs, your open 1:1 commitments, and your calendar for the week ahead. It produces a comprehensive weekly plan: three outcomes, carry-forwards, what you owe your team, and a day-by-day focus map.
You identify a thread and give a brief instruction. The agent reads the full conversation for context, drafts a reply calibrated to your voice and the relationship, loads it into Gmail compose, and waits for your review. Total time per email: under 60 seconds.
Thirty minutes before any 1:1, trigger this agent with your direct report's name. It reads their running notes file in Drive, synthesizes recent history and open action items, and produces a structured brief — agenda, questions, desired outcomes — before you walk in the room.
Every time you finish a Google Meet 1:1, your meeting transcript is automatically moved into the right person's folder in Google Drive — no manual filing, no forgetting. The next time the 1:1 Prep agent runs, it reads the transcript automatically.
You show up to every 1:1 fully briefed. You take no manual notes during the meeting. Your full attention stays on the person in front of you.
Open Google Meet on your next call. Click Activities in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Select Transcripts → click Start Transcript. Do this at the start of each 1:1 until it becomes habit.
This is the most important step. Make.com reads the meeting title to know whose folder to file the notes into. Every 1:1 calendar invite must follow this exact format:
If your invites are already named this way, you're ready. If not, update them in Google Calendar now — it takes two minutes.
Go to make.com and sign up for a free account. Make.com is a visual automation tool — think of it as a simple flowchart where you connect blocks: when this happens → do that. No code involved.
You only want this automation to run for 1:1 meetings — not every Meet recording. Click the small wrench icon on the arrow between the two modules, then select Set up a filter.
This means the automation only fires when the filename includes "1:1 —" — ignoring team calls, client meetings, or anything else Meet records.
Click + to add a second block. Search for Google Drive again. This time select Move a File.
Click Save in the top right. Then click Run once to test it — Make.com will check your Meet Recordings folder and show you exactly what it found.
To fully test it end-to-end: schedule a 2-minute test call with yourself in Google Meet, name the invite 1:1 — Test, start the transcript, end the call, then wait up to 15 minutes. Check whether the transcript doc appeared in your 1:1 Notes folder. If it did — you're done.
Click the toggle to turn the scenario ON. From this point it runs silently in the background. Every future 1:1 transcript lands in the right folder automatically.
This is not a productivity gain. These are hours that belong back in your hands — for strategy, for leadership, for the work that only you can do.
The agents aren't four separate tools. They're one operating rhythm — a sequence that means you arrive at your desk every day knowing exactly what matters and why.
Before running any agent, create this folder structure in Google Drive. The agents are named after these folders exactly — spelling matters.
Don't phase this. Get all four agents running in 30 days, then iterate based on real usage. The compounding starts on day one — waiting for a "phase two" just delays the learning.
70% fast beats 100% slow. The last 30% belongs to you — the subject matter expert.
"I'll build you the CFO office I built for myself — one that runs at 30% of the cost, with 80% of the intelligence, and 100% of the strategic judgment."