An artifact is something Claude builds beside your chat: a doc, a deck, a design, or a small interactive tool you can click and type into. You describe it in plain words, Claude writes the code, and you change it by talking. For a founder, that means a pricing calculator, a waitlist page or a clickable demo in an afternoon, without hiring anyone.
Artifacts changed on September 16, 2026. Ones made before that date are now called legacy artifacts: they still work, but you can't make new ones. This guide covers the current version.
1Pick one small app worth building
Build the one that removes a real bottleneck this month. One finished tool beats four half-built ones.
| Idea | What it does | Who sees it | Build it as |
|---|---|---|---|
| ROI or pricing calculator | A prospect enters their numbers and sees what they'd save | Prospects on your landing page | A design you export as HTML |
| Waitlist page | Explains your offer and collects emails | The public | A design, then hosted with a real form |
| Metrics tracker | You log MRR, burn and runway each month and it charts them | You, then investors via your update | An interactive artifact with saved data |
| Clickable demo | Shows your product flow before it's built | Customers in interviews, investors in meetings | A design prototype you present from your screen |
2Turn it on and check your plan
- Open Settings > Capabilities on claude.ai.
- Turn on Cloud code execution and file creation. Artifacts don't work without it. On Team and Enterprise, an admin controls this.
| What you want to do | Free | Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| Create artifacts, and start from Docs, Slides or Design templates | Yes | Yes |
| Share with anyone who has the link, or invite people by email (beta) | No | Yes |
| Let the artifact save data between visits | No | Yes |
| Connect it to your apps, like Google Calendar or Slack | No | Yes |
| Dashboards template (beta) | No | Yes |
Pro costs $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly ($200 up front). Artifact work counts toward the same usage limits as the rest of your Claude use.
3Ask for it the right way
You can start three ways: ask in any chat, select Output in the message box and choose a template, or pick a template in the Artifacts tab in the sidebar. Everything you make is saved in that tab.
A good request names the goal, the layout, the content and the audience. If you plan to put the app on your own website, ask for it as a design (Output, then Design), because designs can be exported as standalone HTML.
Build an interactive ROI calculator for my landing page, as a design. Product: [one line on what you sell]. Customer: [role at type of company]. Inputs the visitor enters: [e.g. team size, hours per week on the task, hourly cost]. Our price: [price and billing period]. Output: monthly time saved, monthly money saved, and payback period, with the formula shown under each result. Rules: use only the numbers and assumptions I gave you. Label every assumption so the visitor can change it. No made-up statistics, logos or testimonials. Mobile-first, one column on phones, plain language. End with one button: "[your call to action]".
4Iterate until it works
The first version is a starting point. Then:
- Test with real numbers. Check the math against a spreadsheet before anyone else touches it.
- Big changes in chat: "make it darker and simpler", "move the results above the inputs".
- Small changes in place: on a design, leave an inline comment on the exact element, or drag and resize it on the canvas. In a doc, highlight text and click Edit with Claude.
- Errors: click Try fixing with Claude next to the error message.
- New direction: say "Save what we have and try a completely different approach", so you don't lose the version that worked. Or ask for 2 to 3 variations side by side.
Act as a skeptical first-time visitor on a phone. Test this artifact with: zero, blank fields, very large numbers, negative numbers, and a typo in a number field. List every place where the result is wrong, confusing or breaks the layout. Then fix them one at a time and tell me what you changed.
5Know what artifacts can and can't do
On paid plans, an artifact can do three extra things:
- Use Claude inside the app. A pitch-practice coach or a feedback form that summarizes answers, for example. No API keys needed, and each person's use counts against their own Claude plan, not yours. New artifacts ask for permission the first time they call Claude.
- Save data between visits. Storage is either personal (each user sees only their own entries) or shared (everyone sees the same data). The limit is 20 MB per artifact, text only.
- Connect to your apps. It can read from and write to apps you've connected to Claude, like Asana, Google Calendar and Slack. Each viewer connects their own apps, and you approve the tools the first time.
Build an interactive tracker for my startup metrics that saves data in personal storage. Each month I enter: month, MRR, new customers, churned customers, cash in bank, monthly burn. Show: a table of all months, an MRR chart, and runway in months (cash divided by burn). Add a "Copy summary" button that produces three plain sentences I can paste into an investor update. Use only the data I enter. If a month is missing a value, show "missing", never a guess.
7Remix instead of starting from scratch
- Someone else's legacy artifact (Free, Pro and Max): open the published artifact, click Copy, start a new chat, paste the code and describe your changes. Your version is separate from the original.
- Your own work: ask Claude for variations, or say "save what we have" before you try a new direction.
- Your best prompts: keep them in a Claude Project so your next mini app starts from a prompt that already worked.
What's next
Take your page public with Ship a landing page with Claude Code, turn a prompt you reuse into a skill, or put your calculator in front of real prospects with your first 10 customers. More free tools are in the Skill Library.