16 Feb 2026

Resources

Claude Cowork Plugins - the Complete Implementation Guide

https://www.notion.so/Claude-Cowork-Plugins-The-Complete-Implementation-Guide-10-Real-World-Workflows-2fa0aad894ce815ea3f0d15d4290fb01

Learnings

Paths

Here's how to think about paths in Cowork & best practices to reference files & folders in skills:

The two-environment problem

Claude Cowork runs your tasks inside an ephemeral Linux container session, not directly on your Mac. Your Mac's ~/c/xx/ is mounted into that container at a path like /sessions/<session-id>/mnt/xx/. The ~ in the container resolves to the container's home directory (e.g. /sessions/<session-id>/), so ~/c/xx/ expands to a path that doesn't actually contain your files — they're under mnt/ instead.

This is why hard-coded ~/c/xx/ references in skill templates break: the ~ means something different inside the container than it does on your Mac.

Best practices for path references in skills

The most robust approach is to use relative paths or discovered paths rather than hard-coded absolute ones. A few strategies:

Use /mnt/ as the base when writing skills that will run in Cowork. Your files land at /mnt/xx/ in the container, so skill templates should reference /mnt/xx/ rather than ~/c/xx/. This is the most reliable anchor point.

At the top of any skill or workflow, have Claude discover the actual path first with a quick find or ls before assuming where things are. Something like: "First, verify the client folder exists at /mnt/xx/{client}/ before proceeding." This turns a hard crash into a graceful check.

In your CLAUDE.md config files, explicitly document both paths — the Mac path (~/c/xx/) for your own reference, and the container path (/mnt/xx/) for what Cowork actually uses. This prevents confusion when you're editing skills on your Mac and then running them in Cowork.

Avoid ~ entirely in skill templates meant to run inside Cowork sessions. Either use /mnt/ as the root or use a path discovery step.

Quick mental model: think of /mnt/ in Cowork as the equivalent of ~/c/ on your Mac. When translating paths from your Mac workspace to skill templates, swap ~/c/ → /mnt/.