Cowork Context Hub — Reference Setup

This is a reference repo. Read this README to set up your own context hub folder — don't copy this repo wholesale. Your hub only needs a handful of files (listed below).

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What you're building

A local folder that gives both Claude Code (terminal) and Cowork (Claude desktop) access to GitHub, via a shared .env and a local gh binary in ./bin.

File	Purpose
CLAUDE.md	Tells Claude to source load-env.sh on every session start
save-env.sh	Reads your gh token from the host keyring and writes .env — run in Claude Code
load-env.sh	Sources .env to export GH_TOKEN and add ./bin to PATH — run in Cowork
bin/gh	gh binary for Cowork's Linux sandbox (arm64), saved here to survive sandbox resets
.env	Generated, gitignored — contains your GitHub token, never committed

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Setup

Step 1 — Create your context hub folder

Make a new empty folder on your machine (e.g. ~/my-context-hub). You'll open this in both Claude Code and Cowork.

Copy CLAUDE.md, load-env.sh, and save-env.sh from this repo into it.

Step 2 — Open the folder in Claude Code

Open the folder in Claude Code. It will read CLAUDE.md and know to source load-env.sh each session.

Step 3 — Install gh, authenticate, and save your token

In Claude Code, ask Claude:

"Install gh, run gh auth login and walk me through it, then run save-env.sh"

Claude will install the gh CLI, guide you through the interactive browser-based OAuth flow (gh auth login), then run save-env.sh — which writes .env with your GitHub token and ./bin on the PATH.

Step 4 — Open the folder in Cowork

Open the Claude desktop app in Cowork mode and select your context hub folder.

Tell Claude:

"Install gh and save it to the local bin file"

Claude will download the gh binary for the sandbox and save it to ./bin/gh.

Step 5 — Commit and push to a private repo

Tell Cowork:

"Git init, add all files, commit, then create a private GitHub repo for this context hub and push to origin main"

Step 6 — Test it

Open a new Cowork chat in your context hub folder and ask:

"Run load-env.sh and then do a git pull"

If it succeeds, you're set up end-to-end.

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Daily use

In Claude Code: CLAUDE.md reminds Claude to source load-env.sh automatically.

In Cowork: At the start of each session tell Claude "run load-env.sh", or it picks it up from CLAUDE.md.

Token rotation: When your token expires, open Claude Code and re-run ./save-env.sh.