Onboard your first AI Employee in Syntic Cowork

What you'll set up

Syntic Cowork is at its best when the AI Employee can reach what you reach and knows how you actually work.

• Your folder, connected tools, and browser — so the Employee can reach what you reach
• A Cowork Project, context files, and Global Instructions — so the Employee knows how you work without you re-explaining
• A Skill for your function — domain expertise built into the workflow
• Scheduled tasks — work that repeats without a prompt

1. Open Syntic Cowork

Open the Syntic Code Desktop → at the top, click Syntic Cowork. Requires a Pro or Max subscription.

2. Create a Project

In the sidebar, find Projects and click the "+" button. Three options: start from scratch, import a project, or use an existing folder.

A Project gives the work a name and a home. The folder you pick is where the Employee reads from and where finished work lands. Every job started inside the Project already knows where to look. More on Projects here.

The Employee reads every file inside (PDFs, spreadsheets, Word docs, whatever's there) and saves finished work back to the same place. It reads your old reports to match formatting and references your templates without being told to.

Q4-Earnings — Name / Date Modified / Size. ACME-Q4-Transcript.pdf — Feb 24, 2026 — 2.1 MB. Birch-Q4-Transcript.pdf — Feb 25, 2026 — 1.8 MB. Cypress-Q4-Transcript.pdf — Feb 25, 2026 — 1.9 MB. Coverage-Model-2026.xlsx — Feb 20, 2026 — 412 KB. Q3-Research-Note.docx — Nov 12, 2025 — 86 KB. "Describe what you'd like me to do with these files…" Q4-Earnings + Syntic AI Standard.

3. Connect your tools

Open the Customize sidebar → connect and toggle on the tools where your work lives.

Connect tools like Slack, Google Drive, Calendar, Gmail — one-time setup, and every job from then on can pull from them.

Instead of pasting a Slack thread into your prompt, you mention it ("check what the team said in Slack about this week's earnings") and the dispatched Agent finds the relevant messages. The Employee can also act in connected tools: draft an email in Gmail, save a file to Drive, leave a comment where the discussion lives.

Connectors: Slack, Google Drive, Google Calendar.

4. Tell the Employee how you work

Click into your Project and find the instructions box → write what the Employee should know.

A Project has Instructions that carry into every job started inside it — read alongside everything in your folder.

What goes in is up to you. Standing context you'd otherwise re-explain at the top of every prompt: your role and function, the output format you default to, where things live across tools, judgment calls you want made the same way every time.

For anything that should evolve — a running log of decisions, notes that grow as the work does — put it in a file in your folder instead. "Add what we covered to my notes file" works on files; the Instructions panel is user-set and stays as you wrote it.

Global Instructions that apply across every Project

Settings > Syntic Cowork → click Edit next to Global Instructions → type and save.

For preferences that don't change between projects: things you want the Employee to check before doing, defaults like "save drafts as .docx" or "ask before deleting anything." These carry into every conversation regardless of which Project you're in.

To check the context is being picked up: ask "tell me what you know about how I work here."

Both are optional. With more context, the Employee knows more about your work without you spelling it out each time.

5. Add expertise, scheduling, and browser access

Each of these extends Cowork in a different direction depending on what your work calls for.

Skills

Open the Customize sidebar → Skills → install the one that fits your role.

If you want outputs with domain expertise built in (a finance analyst's framework, a sales team's workflows, a legal reviewer's checklist), install the Skill for your function.

A single prompt can then run a structured workflow with that expertise baked in. You can also customize a pre-built Skill or build your own for workflows specific to your team. More on Skills →

Scheduled tasks

Type /schedule in any conversation, or go to the Scheduled tab in the sidebar → + New Task.

Once you have a job that runs well (a status report, a weekly briefing, a data pull), set it to run on a schedule without prompting each time.

Cowork walks you through the cadence, the folder, and what the output should look like. As long as Syntic Code Desktop is open, the task runs on its own and the finished file is waiting when you check. If not, the task runs once you reopen the app. More on scheduled tasks

Syntic for Chrome

Open the Customize sidebar → Syntic for Chrome → install the extension and enable.

If your work lives behind logins (dashboards, admin panels, web apps), Syntic for Chrome lets the Employee see your browser and dispatch Agents inside it.

Cowork can click through pages, fill forms, pull data from anything you're logged into, and write back to web tools the same way it writes to your folder. Give browser access only to sites you trust. More on Syntic for Chrome

Syntic for Chrome — let the Employee handle work in the browser. Analytics — Dashboard. app.example.com/dashboard. Q4 Overview, last 30 days. 42.8k Sessions. 3.2% Conversion. Syntic.

One job, end to end

Here's how it looks in practice — an analyst updating a research note during earnings season. The shape is the same for any job where you're pulling from files and tools to ship something finished.

1. Describe what you want back

A prompt works well when it gives the Employee what to look at, what you want back, and where it should go. You don't have to engineer the perfect prompt. The Employee will ask follow-ups for whatever you leave out.

Chat — Syntic Cowork — Code.

Let's knock something off your list.

Q4-Earnings + Syntic AI Standard.

2. Answer a few questions

Based on your prompt and what it found, the Employee asks a few questions to land the output — which approach to take, what to prioritize, how the finished work should look.

Pick one of the options offered, or type your own answer. If a question isn't quite right, say so and the Employee will ask differently.