Extract purchasing-card receipt data into a report cover sheet
A Duke staff member tested Cowork on a receipt PDF; it crashed partway, though it handled a folder of PDFs and wrote results to an outputs folder.
Done withClaude Cowork
- What they did
- Stephen Toback pointed Cowork at a purchasing-card receipt PDF and asked it to extract the data and produce a cover sheet for his report, a job he normally does by hand. Cowork ran a Python script in its local Linux VM, hit an error, debugged it, and wrote the output files itself. He also pointed it at a folder of PDFs.
- How it went
- The receipt workflow worked and the result files appeared in the outputs folder. Cowork then hung when his connectivity dropped. Restarting the app and the computer didn't fix it, and recovery required clearing the app's stored data.
- Worth knowing
- Cowork's reasoning runs in Anthropic's cloud, so a connectivity drop mid-task can break the session. Avoid relying on it for time-sensitive work. Output files are ordinary files and survive the crash.
Try it yourself with Claude Cowork
I have purchasing-card receipts as PDFs in [folder path]. Extract vendor, date, amount and the business purpose from each one, and fill a cover sheet in the format of [template file or describe columns]. Process the files one at a time and save results to an outputs folder so progress isn't lost. List any receipts that couldn't be read.
Source: sites.duke.edu · Feb 24, 2026
Five of these in your inbox every morning
The best things people got an AI agent to do, each with the prompt to try it.
More like this
Summarize email and prep briefings from your phone
A Fortune writer used Claude Dispatch with Cowork to summarize and pick out important emails, plus recurring morning briefings and meeting prep from the calendar.
Find and score leads from social post engagers
A Cowork agent scrapes LinkedIn post engagers via Apify, enriches via Apollo, scores them against an ideal customer, and drafts outreach for the best fits.
Run a home robot through Claude Desktop
Tal Raviv controlled a robot via Claude Desktop with his usual email and calendar tools; it proposed patrolling the house and publishing a field journal, and did a test run.
- GitHub Copilot
Run a solo company with eight agent departments
A founder set up CEO, CFO, COO, lawyer, accountant, marketing, CTO, and improver agents that share memory and consult each other.
Run a VC analyst agent over Telegram
A VC set up an OpenClaw agent as an analyst on a cheap VPS, reachable by Telegram, which he says could save dozens of hours per quarter.
- Custom agent
Chase unpaid invoices and paperwork by email for small firms
An agent watches for unpaid invoices and paperwork, emails people until they say yes, no, or pay, and escalates decisions to the owner.