Claude

Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant app: the chat product at claude.ai, plus native apps for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android, and a Linux desktop build in beta. It is the front door to the rest of Anthropic's consumer and team products. Claude Cowork, Claude Design, Claude Code, Claude for Excel, and Claude for Chrome all hang off the same account and share the same usage allowance.

It is aimed at anyone who wants a general assistant that can also reach into their files and tools. Developers use it for research and quick prototypes before dropping into Claude Code; founders and marketers use it as a writing, analysis, and document-production workspace. The distinguishing features are less the chat itself and more the layer around it: Projects, connectors, skills, memory, and code execution.

Highlights

• Projects with a knowledge base. Anthropic's help center says Projects are available to every user, with Free capped at five projects, while the pricing page lists Projects (unlimited) under Pro and above. Upload documents, set project instructions, and every chat in the project starts with that context. Each project keeps its own memory separate from your other chats, and on paid plans Claude switches to a retrieval mode when project knowledge approaches the context limit.
• Connectors (MCP integrations). Google Drive, Slack, Notion, and the rest of the directory under Customize are MCP servers. Custom remote MCP connectors work on all plans, Free limited to one; Claude Desktop can also run local MCP servers. See the AI connectors entry for the non-developer framing.
• Artifacts. Standalone content, apps, and visualizations rendered in a side window on Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise. Free, Pro, and Max users can publish an artifact to a public link; Team and Enterprise share within the organization.
• Skills, including your own. Anthropic ships document skills for .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, and PDF. You can upload a custom SKILL.md folder as a ZIP on any plan, and enabled skills also apply inside Cowork and the Microsoft 365 add-ins. Details in the skills on claude.ai guide.
• Memory. On by default for Free, Pro, and Max on web, desktop, and mobile; organization owners enable it on Team and Enterprise. Claude saves topics as you chat, you can edit them in settings, and incognito chats skip memory entirely. Since August 25, 2026, memory also carries into Cowork sessions in the cloud.
• Code execution and file creation. Enabled by default on every plan. Claude can analyze uploaded data, chart it, and produce Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files, with a 30 MB per-file limit.

In an AI-assisted workflow

A practical pattern is to treat a Project as a per-client or per-product workspace: load the brief, style guide, and reference data into project knowledge, connect Drive or Notion as a connector, then run recurring tasks from that context.

Using the pricing sheet in project knowledge and the latest Notion
roadmap page, draft a one-page changelog for customers. Produce it as
a .docx and flag any feature whose ship date moved since last month.

Good to know

Plans, as of September 2026 from claude.com/pricing: Free is $0 and includes chat on web, iOS, Android, and desktop, web search, memory, file creation with code execution, connectors, and voice mode. Pro is $20 per month monthly or $17 per month annual, adding more usage, Claude Code, Cowork, Design, Science, Projects, research, multiple models, and Claude for Microsoft 365. Max starts at $100 per month with 5x or 20x Pro usage, higher output limits, and early access to features. Team is $25 per Standard seat or $125 per Premium seat monthly ($20 and $100 annual), with central billing and SSO. Enterprise is sales-assisted at $20 per seat per month plus usage at API rates, adding SCIM, audit logs, and retention controls. The plans comparison walks through which product each tier unlocks.

Models, per the pricing page as of September 2026: Free gets Sonnet and Haiku; every paid plan adds Opus. Fable, Anthropic's top model, is reachable on Pro only through usage credits, capped at 50% of weekly limits on Max, not offered on Team, and included on Enterprise. The model picker varies by plan and organization settings, so check what your account shows.

Two caveats. Chat search across past conversations is paid-only even though memory itself is free. And everything here shares one usage pool: a heavy Cowork or Design session draws down the same allowance as your chats.