The 8 canonical templates

# The 8 canonical templates

> **Source:** Appendix A (appendices L68-77) and Appendix B (appendices L191-268)

The book asks you to assemble these into a `cowork-templates.txt` on your Desktop over Chapters 4-12 (ch12 Days 22-25: *"This template library is your automation playbook"*).

**The repo hands it to you pre-built:** [`rules/cowork-templates.txt`](../../rules/cowork-templates.txt). Download it, drop it on your Desktop, fill in the brackets.

| Template | What it is |
|---|---|
| [The Audit-First Prompt Pattern](01-audit-first-pattern.md) | The four-step spine of the entire book: OBSERVE -> REVIEW -> ACT -> VERIFY. |
| [Daily Email Triage Template](02-daily-email-triage.md) | The condensed form of the Chapter 5 email machine. |
| [Weekly Data Analysis Template](03-weekly-data-analysis.md) | Audit -> clean -> report, in one block. |
| [Folder Organization Template](04-folder-organization.md) | The Chapter 4 project in one block, with the review gate marked. |
| [Job Application Batch Template (supervised)](05-job-application-batch.md) | The Chapter 5 job pipeline. |
| [Client Invoice Follow-Up Template](06-invoice-follow-up.md) | The Chapter 9 invoice chain, condensed. |
| [Monday Morning Prep Template](07-monday-morning-prep.md) | The Chapter 9 four-step chain: calendar -> Drive -> email -> one brief. |
| [Complete Workflow Template](08-complete-workflow.md) | The generic multi-step skeleton, with the task-log line the book asks you to append to everything. |

These eight are lifted verbatim from the appendices. `rules/cowork-templates.txt` is **generated from these files**, so the two can never drift apart — `tests/test_catalog.py` asserts every template body appears in it byte-for-byte.

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*From the companion repo for* **Claude Cowork: Automate Your Job This Weekend** *— [youcanbuildthings.com](https://youcanbuildthings.com). Educational use only; see the [disclaimer](../../DISCLAIMER.md).*