Claude Pro / quick start

You bought
headroom and
a coworker.

Pro is everything the free plan does, plus a lot more room to work and a set of tools that do multi-step jobs for you. Here is what to touch first.

One bar, three taps

This is the single most useful thing to understand about Pro.

SESSION START+5 HOURS
Chat on web, phone, desktop Cowork Claude Code
Chat, Cowork, and Claude Code all draw from the same pool. It refills on a rolling five-hour window, and a weekly cap sits on top of that. A busy Cowork afternoon is what leaves less room for chat that evening.

There is no fixed message count. How far the bar goes depends on conversation length, the model, and the features in play. Check yours anytime in Settings > Usage.

What just unlocked

Free already covered chat, web search, memory, file creation, and connectors. These are the additions.

Cowork

A desktop agent that works through multi-step jobs across your actual files instead of answering one message at a time.

When a task has ten steps

Research

Sends Claude across many sources and comes back with one compiled, sourced report rather than a single search.

When one answer isn't enough

Unlimited Projects

A workspace with its own instructions and reference files, so you stop re-explaining context every chat.

For anything ongoing

More models

The model picker opens up, including Opus for harder reasoning. Fable, the top model, runs on pay-as-you-go credits.

When quality beats speed

Claude Design

Generates first-pass visuals and layouts from a plain description.

Slides, pages, mockups

Claude Code

The coding agent, in a terminal or code editor. Safe to ignore if you don't write code.

Optional

Claude Science

A workspace tuned for research-heavy technical work.

Optional

Claude for Microsoft 365

Connects Claude to Word, Excel, and the rest of the Office side.

If you live in Office

Starting Cowork

On Pro, Cowork runs locally on your own computer, so the desktop app has to be open and awake while it works.

  1. Install the desktop app

    Cowork lives in Claude for Mac or Windows, not the browser. On Windows, update to the current version or it won't appear.

  2. Point it at one folder

    Pick the narrowest folder that holds what the job needs. Everything it reads costs usage, so aiming it at an entire drive burns the bar on files that don't matter.

  3. Describe the finished thing

    Say what you want to end up with, not the steps to get there. "Turn these twelve invoices into one summary spreadsheet by vendor" beats "open the first invoice."

  4. Watch the first run, then let go

    Read what it does on an early task to learn how it thinks. Once you trust the pattern, hand it bigger jobs and check the output instead of the process.

Habits that stretch the bar

When you hit the wall

Three ways out, in the order most people should try them.

Wait it out

The window is rolling, so the bar refills on its own. Settings > Usage shows the next reset.

Turn on usage credits

Keeps you working past the limit at standard API rates. Set a spending cap. If you subscribed in the phone app, you can only switch this on from the web.

Move to Max

Only worth it if you're hitting limits constantly. Max adds 5x or 20x the usage and nothing else. Same features.