Research Synthesis

When you're deep in research, you often have a dozen tabs open, several PDFs downloaded, and scattered notes. Cowork acts as your research assistant to pull it all together.

The Workflow

1. Download relevant papers or articles into a "Research" folder.
2. If you have notes in text files, add them too.
3. Ask Claude: "Read the papers in this folder and write a synthesis report summarizing the key findings, common themes, and contradictions. Cite the sources."

Why it works

Claude has a large context window and can process multiple documents simultaneously. By having direct file access, it can cross-reference the actual files on your disk without you needing to copy-paste text into the chat.