Descriptions:
Jeff Su shares five optimization tips for Claude’s Cowork system — Anthropic’s markdown-based workspace where instructions and memory live in .md files that load at session start. The advice is drawn from five months of daily use and focuses on avoiding compounding inefficiencies that are easy to miss when first setting up a workspace.
The first tip recommends using Obsidian as a free viewer and editor for markdown files, eliminating the friction of reading raw .md syntax and enabling zoom, read-only mode, and non-markdown file previews. Tip two introduces the 300-line rule for the root CLAUDE.md file: Su measured a 25% reduction in token usage after cutting his own file from over 600 lines to around 250, achieved by auditing which rules are needed every session versus only for specific tasks. A routing map table inside CLAUDE.md directs Claude to load different specialized “workstation” context files depending on the task type — email drafting, Chinese-language projects, brainstorming — rather than loading everything at once.
Tip three covers the memory diet: structuring the root memory.mmd file into active projects, scheduled tasks, and core facts sections, with a hard 150-line ceiling and a compression-first policy when the ceiling is breached. Tip four demonstrates a self-auditing workflow where Claude reviews its own memory file for structural violations before committing new entries. Tip five revisits the routing map in more depth with examples from Su’s actual workspace. The video references a free Cowork toolkit in the description and is sponsored by HubSpot.
📺 Source: Jeff Su · Published May 19, 2026
🏷️ Format: Tutorial Demo
