OpenWork & Shadow DESTROYS Claude Cowork? (FREE!)

Today we're going to be looking at Shadow, which is a competitor to Claude Co-work. So, if you haven't seen it already, Claude Co-work is a powerful AI agent that sits on your desktop. You can automate all sorts of cool stuff with it. But Shadow is basically a free alternative that basically works in a similar way apparently, right? So, you don't need to do manual tasks inside mail or notes or Excel or any Mac app. You just tell Shadow what you want and then you can get it done. So, to get this, I'm going to test it out. I don't know if it works or not, but we're going to compare it versus Cowork and just see how it performs and see if it's up to par and whether it's a worthy competitor. So, from here, I'm just going to get started with this. We'll download it for Mac and then the cool thing is it's just a DMG, which should make it easy to use and hopefully it works. Let's see. We'll test this out. All right, so we've just installed it and then we can open this up. Allow. Let's see if we can log in. All right, so we've created a free account. That was pretty easy. And then if we go back to Shadow now, we've got this open, right? You can't actually resize it, but it's going to sit on your desktop like that. And then what we're actually going to do is open up Claude over here. And we'll take a look at Claude Co-work. Now, bear in mind, co-work is only available on the Max plan, right? And the max plan, the Claude Co-work is something like $200 a month, something like that, right? And so, we've got a free alternative here. And we have Claude Co-work. And we're just going to compare side by side how they perform, which one performs the best. So, let's take a look at this. Can you update the sales deck with the latest numbers? Interesting. All right, we'll see if it can create a presentation pistol. We're going to say build out an A automation theme Tetris game with CTA prof link is here. Funnel traffic to this page. Make sure the game is fun, dopamine, inducing, crazy colors, etc. And so, we actually have a prototype over here of this, which you can see right here. This is the one from Claude Co-work. It runs locally. It was created, no code. Let's test it out inside Shadow using exactly the same process. Now, we can reference our actual browser as you can see. And then we can also attach files to this, which is pretty cool. So, let's see what we got here. We may have to allow a bunch of stuff as well. Side by side. We'll see how this performs. We can also have a look inside the settings. See what we got here. Ah, so you can actually toggle a window shortcut, which is pretty cool. Also bring your own API key over here as well, which is super useful. The colors are very similar, right? The colors of Claude Co and Shadow look very similar. So it's beginning to write that. Now let's compare the speed as well of these side by side. So we'll create a new task. Doing the same thing inside claw code. Like you see claw cowork. Asprey asks like for ideides which free IDE is worth testing out and checking out. So I think there's only really two that I would personally showcase on a video right now. If you see my recent videos, you probably already know which ones they are. In terms of a free IDE with free coding, I would recommend anti-gravity. Anti-gravity is very powerful. You can link MCPs. You can use open code inside there. It's kind of like a copy of Virtual Studio Code, but the difference is that when you're coding out with it, it also has the browser use agent and it has free APIs for Claude Opus as well, which is awesome. And that the MCP is pretty easy, too, right? Whereas, for example, if you are Yeah, I mean there's others, but I would go with anti-gravity and probably open code as well. So, shallow didn't seem to respond to the first one, and it's okay. No, I didn't do that. Let's start coding that out right now. So, it's beginning to do that as you can see. So, it's created a to-do list here. It's using the right tool and then it will start creating the totally failed on that. So, you can see here it's failed at all. We're going to go back to use your own API key. Let's test that out instead. Maybe that will work better. Obviously, if I start using my own API, then it becomes a paid tool. But, we'll test this out just to give it another shot and see if it actually works. The one that I have been testing out recently, I'll show you in a second, is not bad at all. There's another alternative here that you can use. So, we're just going to create a key. There we go. I have to delete that in a sec. All right. So, let's go back to shadow. We'll plug that in. We'll save that. We'll see what we got. Claude co-work is superior in terms of speed for sure. And you can see also here it says I don't have any previous contextes. So, this is the third time of entering the prompt. Let's see what we get back. You can clearly see like co-workers superior. It's already coded out the game. That worked out perfectly. Even with the API, this is running really slow. Whereas the game on coowork is just it's ready to go. Right. It's even got your sound effects in there. Boom. All right. That works perfectly. That this is taking a little while. I think this is just not working. Is it? It's all working. If we go to settings here, we have used our own API key, but even then it's just not working. If we go back to the conversation, it's still just stuck. But the problem is we don't know where we're up to. You can't see the progress, right? So, for example, inside Claude, you can see what it's working on currently. You can see the steps and you know where it's up to in each task. With shadow, you don't seem to get that so much. I will show you one other option though that I think is worth considering. Right? So, I'm going to shut down. I'm going to leave shadow in the background. Why not? All right. But let me show you an example of what you

can actually do. So, this is with open work. So, you can see an example here. And if we say okay, run this. Right? This is a free tool called open work. Right? With open work, you can do the same prompt and it actually works. So, this runs locally again. It's similar to co-work and it's similar to shadow, but it actually works and it actually created the content for the game and everything else, right? You can see that it launched this game. It created it. It works perfectly. It looks beautiful to be fair. Like the UI is super nice. I like the style on the background and everything like that. And it's pretty quick and easy to use. So, I think number one, I'm going to have to delete that API key from shadow. Let's close that. Shadow doesn't seem to work. It's just not ready yet. I like the fact that they're giving it away for free, but you got to make sure this stuff works. But you can see here that it can actually code and build out projects for you locally using Openwork. And I would say that's the better option. If you want to see examples of Openwork in action, go to the AI Success Lab link in the comments description and you'll see a full video tutorial on how to set it up plus where to get access, right? So, you can get access via the GitHub or via the website. You can see an example right here. And it's pretty simple and easy to just download the DMG for Windows and then get this set up. You can also work with skills now as well, which I didn't realize before. So, let's have a look here. We go to settings. So, you can use a Google or an anthropic API key. We've saved a couple. You can choose which model you want. You got debug mode if you want it. And now it's got a skill manager as well, which is pretty cool. So, yeah, I would say that Openwork is much more of a worthy competitor compared to Shadow and Co-work. Let's test something else out now. So if we go back here and we're like okay let's create a budget tracker spreadsheet. So we're going to take this one which is the task we did on co-work going to run it inside here as well and see if this can work. So we got open work on the left hand side we have co-work on the right hand side. Obviously the difference here is if you're using for example Google co-work sorry if you're using claude co-work then it's quite an expensive tool. it cost like $200 a month, right? Whereas if you're using Open Work, you're only paying for the API. That's it. And you can get cheap APIs or Gemini Flash, that sort of thing. So, I'm going to go back here. It's using the browser and it wants to use Google Sheets that way. The other thing you'll notice is like when it was using that browser a second ago, it's not logged into your main browser. Whereas, if you're using co-work, it is logged into your main browser. So, the difference here is it's good for privacy, but it's bad because you have to log into everything again. If that makes sense. So, let's try something else out. Now, we're going to say, okay, just Google the latest news in AI automation and then make a report for me about YouTube topics I could talk about today, right? Which is like an actual task that I would do dayto-day anyway. And we can just automate it with open work, but also show you the power of it, right? So, it's now opening up a new Chrome browser and it's searching for the latest news automation in 2026. So, it's looking at Google. It's going to scroll through it. It's going to have a look and it could just do that research. So if you have a look here in the background, it's now going to search for more relevant topics. It's doing more Google searches. It's looking for January 2026 as well. And it's doing this all whilst I'm talking to you. So the cool thing is about whether you're using claude co-work or open work. Both of these are like no code. Both of them are easy to install. They make AI agents accessible for anyone. And I think like traditionally people like to use programs installed locally. For me personally, I have my laptop is like a Chrome machine, but I think for a lot of people, they like to install the actual file and then go from there. So, you can see now it's given us a bunch of ideas for topics we could talk about on YouTube. It gave us a bunch of ideas for trending topics and it did it all whilst I was talking to you. So, that did a pretty good job. I would say that is much more competent than using something like Shadow, but I'm sure Shadow will improve in the future. And if you want a more accessible version of Claude Co-work that is free and you just use your API, then I'll probably go with Open Work. So, thanks so much for watching. If you want to get all the video instructions for setting up Open Work for free, if you want to get all the resource links, a 30-day plan for installing this, and also 100 prompts you can test out with Openwork, you can get that inside the AI success lab link in the comments description. And this is a community with 46,300 members as you can see. and also inside the AI profit board. If you haven't checked it out already, this is an amazing community where we show you how to win with AI, right? So, if you want to learn AI automation, how to get more clients, if you want to save time and scale and automate with AI, then check out the AI profit boardroom like you can see, it's an amazing community where we all support and raise and help each other grow. If you have questions, you can post in the community and get help and support like you can see right here. If you want personal help from me, you can connect with me. I actually answer all of the questions inside the AI profit boardroom personally. And then also inside the classroom here, you can get all of my best trainings, right? So, if you want to go from like complete beginner to expert in AI and learn how to build your

first AI agent in under 5 minutes, you can get that inside the classroom. If you want to get my best playbooks on automating X, YouTube videos, avatar videos, faceless channels, you can get that all inside the Apuffer boardroom here. For example, you can see my latest screen shares process with a video tutorial and also step-by-step instructions right here. If you want to learn how to get more clients, we've got an agency course here. You can learn from my best coaching calls. And also, we show you how to rank number one inside AI and other AI search engines as well as how to build out faceless channels with YouTube. So, all of my best playbooks are inside here. Plus, you can jump on live coaching calls, get help, get support whenever you need it. And that's all inside the AI profit boardroom link in the comments description or go to ariprofrofitboardroom. com. So let's answer some of the questions that we've got right here. Aurora says, "Hi Julian, love your work. When you get a chance, run this N stateless model and ask it to run it as a lens to experience something different. " Not sure what you mean, but sounds cool. I like the idea of it. Never realized they have free Claude. What if you do it on anti-gravity? Not sure what you mean. Safia says, "Is the chat working? " The chat is working indeed. Looks like Claude coowork destroys shadow. Yeah, I would agree. I think Claude coowork is a superior model. But at the same time, if you want a free version, then just use open work. Open work is the best. Did I test conductor? Yeah, you can check out my other videos on YouTube about it. If you just type in Julian Goldie Google Conductor. Do you need an API for open work? Yeah, you just plug in your own API directly inside there. And Chowdery says, I am right now new here. Happy to sh I'm not going to share my WhatsApp number. There's no way. But if you want to connect with me personally, check out the AirProfit boardroom. Just join inside there. You can direct message me and that sort of thing. That's a place that I connect with everyone, right? And you got 2,100 men there as well that you can ask questions and get support from directly right