Migrating a team off Claude Cowork: what to move, and in what order

Description and use

Migrating a team from Claude Cowork to Kortix preserves configuration, memory, and permissions using a git repository and open source code, while enabling self‑hosting.

Problem

Teams struggle to move from Claude Cowork because configuration, memory and permissions are locked in a closed product, making migration difficult.

Outcome

The migration preserves team knowledge, enables code‑style review, and allows self‑hosting, while avoiding loss of configuration or permissions.

Workflow

• 1. Identify owned assets: list agents, skills, memory and permissions in Cowork.
• 2. Install Kortix with curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install | bash, kortix init, kortix ship.
• 3. Migrate configuration in three layers: a. Machine and model – choose model per agent, bring own API key, keep self‑host option. b. Agents and skills – copy markdown prompts, review via diff. c. Permissions – translate Cowork approval habits into explicit allow/ask/block rules. 4. Run migration as a change request: merge one workflow, review diff, then widen to more workflows. 5. Verify by running a single team job, watching the session, and reading the first change request. 6. Self‑host if data residency is required; credentials stay server‑side. 7. Compare old and new surfaces on ownership, model choice, deployment, connectors, review. 8. Iterate until all workflows and assets are migrated and verified.

Evidence

Claude Cowork is excellent for one person on one desktop. The hard part starts when a team tries to move off it: the work is real, but the configuration, the memory and the permissions live in a closed product, not in anything you can copy.

Source

In Kortix, agents, skills, memory, triggers and connector config are files in one git repo you own, so they can be reviewed like code.

Source

Kortix installs in three commands: curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install | bash, then kortix init, then kortix ship.

Source

The property that makes this safe is that work reaches the default branch only through a change request a person reads as a diff.

Source

If the reason you are leaving a hosted assistant is data residency, Kortix runs on your laptop, a VPS, your VPC or on‑prem, or on managed cloud.

Source