Build Your AI Operating System: A Full-Day Claude Cowork Workshop (DC)

If you use AI regularly, you already know the problem. Every new conversation starts from zero. You paste in context, re-explain your clients and projects, remind the AI how you work.

This workshop fixes that.

In one day, you'll build an AI Operating System on Claude Cowork. The AI Operating System gives Claude persistent awareness of your business: clients, projects, voice, files. It adapts as you use it.

• An AI that already knows your business. No more pasting in context at the start of every conversation.
• A system that takes action. It drafts proposals, invoices, and other branded materials in your voice.
• One or two custom workflows built during the day, tailored to your work.
• A foundation that gets smarter the more you use it.
• Office hours with the full cohort, thirty days later.

A single workflow that saves you 15 minutes a day, at a $100/hour billable rate, recovers over $6,000 a year.

Nicholas: "I save time every time I use it because it knows my business. I don't have to re-explain myself. It's like I've hired a new employee for $100 a month."

• 8:30 — Doors open. Coffee, breakfast, introductions.
• 9:00 — Intro, demo, and AI mindset. Why an AI Operating System matters. Live demo of Nicholas's setup. How LLMs work and how to talk to them.
• 10:00 — Break
• 10:10 — Claude Cowork: setup and 101. Settings, connectors, models.
• 11:10 — Break
• 11:20 — AI OS Phase 1: Teach Claude your business. File ingestion, structure, foundation layer.
• 12:30 — Lunch
• 1:15 — AI OS Phase 2: Build your context profile. The foundation document that tells Claude how to think about your business.
• 2:30 — Break
• 2:40 — AI OS Phase 3: Build your workflows. One or two custom workflows tailored to your work.
• 3:50 — Break
• 4:00 — Phase 3 continues + wrap-up and show & tell.
• 5:00 — Session concludes

Nicholas Tolson runs Razzo, an AI training and advisory firm in Washington DC. Before that, 20+ years in sales, marketing, and tech leadership across B2B SaaS, luxury brands, and agencies, including roles as a startup CTO and B2B SaaS founder.

Nicholas has taught at Boston University's Center for Digital Imaging Arts (CDIA), and served as Technical Director for National Geographic Photo Camp, where he taught photography and editing alongside world-class NatGeo photographers.

At Razzo, he writes at AI Instinct on Substack and works with consulting firms, agencies, and business owners on AI implementations. You can find him on LinkedIn.

In his own words:

I run my entire business through Claude Cowork. It knows everything. Every client, every meeting, every project. I just talk to it. "Make me a new project proposal based on the discovery meeting we had yesterday. Use a previous proposal as the base." Two minutes later I have a branded proposal ready to review and send. Every day at 7am, it sends me detailed prep notes for all my meetings that day, based on my calendar, previous emails, previous meeting notes, and project context.

In the workshop, you'll build a version of this for your own business.

• Business owners, founders, and team leaders
• Freelancers, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs
• People who use AI daily and want it to know their business

• People looking for an AI overview lecture or a "What is Claude?" intro. We move past those basics quickly.
• People who haven't used AI tools at all yet. Some familiarity with ChatGPT or Claude is needed.
• People here for a vibe-coding workshop. You can use Cowork for that, but this workshop focuses on the AI Operating System.
• Developers looking for a code-level deep dive into Claude's API or MCP internals.

The cohort is capped at twelve so everyone leaves with their own working system. This is the first public run of the workshop. Before this, Nicholas has been doing the same build privately with consulting clients.

• A laptop (Mac or Windows)
• A Claude account (Pro or Max), set up before you arrive
• The Claude Desktop app, installed before you arrive
• A collection of files about your business: client docs, past proposals, brand guidelines, writing samples

You don't need to be technical. Setup is walked through step by step.

You'll build one or two workflows during the workshop. Examples:

• Meeting notes review. Drop in notes or a transcript. Get back a summary, action items, and draft follow-up emails in your voice.
• Meeting prep. Before each meeting, the AI pulls context from your calendar, recent emails, and prior project files.
• Daily briefing. Every morning, a digest of what's coming up: meetings, deadlines, open threads.
• Proposal drafting. Combine discovery-call notes, past proposals, and your business context into a draft in your voice.
• Client digest. A weekly summary across your clients.

ForestPlanet plants trees where they will have the greatest benefit to the soil, local habitat, the environment, and communities in peril. Please check out the for a selection of program clips and video postcards from the field.

What does Claude Cowork have to do with planting trees? Nothing and everything. At ForestPlanet we produce a variety of fun, culturally enriching, and informative events that fold reforestation into the value proposition. We are like many NGOs that need to deliver more impact with fewer resources, and we plan to properly integrate AI tools with business operations in order to augment overall effectiveness... not just streamline administrivia.

• Date: Tuesday, June 2, 2026
• Time: 9:00am – 5:00pm (doors open 8:30am)
• Location: Advantedge Workspace, Suite 640, 5335 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington DC 20015
• Nearest Metro: Friendship Heights (Red Line)
• Parking: Available in the building
• Price: $775 (coffee, breakfast, and lunch included)
• Format: Full day, in-person, hands-on
• Cohort size: 12 participants

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