Claude Chat

Last verified: 13 February 2026 | Applies to: All plans

In 30 seconds

Claude Chat is the conversation interface — but with skills enabled and tools connected, it becomes a genuine work tool. You can build spreadsheets, manage tasks in Asana, create slide decks, render interactive artifacts, and use extended thinking for complex analysis. Projects give you persistent context for recurring work.

What it does

Core capabilities:

• Build and edit spreadsheets, documents, slide decks, and PDFs
• Read from and write to Asana, Notion, Linear, Slack via connectors
• Query databases, build visualisations, run analyses
• Create artifacts — interactive components that render directly in chat

Artifacts are visual outputs Claude creates inline — charts, tables, interactive elements, code previews. They render in a panel alongside the conversation, so you can see the result while continuing to refine it.

Extended thinking lets Claude work through complex problems step by step before responding. Useful for financial analysis, strategic planning, and any task where you want Claude to reason carefully rather than respond quickly. Toggle it on when accuracy matters more than speed.

Projects are persistent context spaces for recurring work. Create a project for “Monthly Reporting” or “Q1 Planning” and Claude retains the context between sessions — your team structure, key metrics, and previous outputs.

How to set it up

1. Enable skills: Settings → Capabilities → toggle on relevant skills. Start with document creation skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF).
2. Connect tools: Settings → Connectors → browse the directory → authenticate with OAuth.
3. Try a task: Ask Claude to create something you’d normally build manually — a weekly report template, a competitor comparison table, a project status update.

Key features in depth

Projects

Projects are persistent workspaces that carry context across multiple conversations. They solve the biggest frustration operators have with chat: having to re-explain everything each time.

How to create a project:

1. Open claude.ai and click Projects in the sidebar
2. Click New Project and give it a name (e.g., “Q1 Planning”, “Monthly Reporting”, “Client Onboarding”)
3. Add a project description — this is context Claude reads at the start of every conversation within the project
4. Upload project files — documents, spreadsheets, reference materials that Claude should know about
5. Start a conversation inside the project

What persists between conversations:

• The project description (your standing instructions and context)
• Uploaded project files (Claude can reference these in any conversation)
• Previous conversation history within the project (Claude can see past threads)

What does not persist:

• Specific outputs from earlier conversations (if you want Claude to reference a previous output, upload it as a project file or paste it in)
• Tool connections — connectors still need to be enabled at the account level

When to use Projects vs. regular chat:

• Use Projects for recurring work — weekly reports, ongoing client accounts, quarterly planning, any topic you return to repeatedly
• Use regular chat for one-off questions, quick tasks, and anything you won’t revisit

Project tip

Seed your project description with the context you’d normally type at the start of every conversation: your role, team members, key acronyms, preferred formats, and any standing rules. This alone saves minutes per session.

Extended thinking

Extended thinking makes Claude pause and reason through a problem before responding. Instead of generating an answer immediately, Claude works through the logic step by step — and you can see the thinking process.

When to toggle it on:

• Complex financial analysis where accuracy matters (variance explanations, reconciliation logic)
• Multi-step reasoning tasks (comparing options across several criteria, evaluating trade-offs)
• Strategic planning that requires weighing multiple factors
• Debugging or troubleshooting where Claude needs to work through possibilities systematically
• Any task where you’ve noticed Claude giving superficial answers and you want depth

What the output looks like: When extended thinking is enabled, you see two sections in the response: a collapsible “thinking” block showing Claude’s reasoning process, and the final answer below it. The thinking block is useful for verifying Claude’s logic — you can see how it arrived at the conclusion and spot any errors in reasoning.

Cost implications: Extended thinking uses more of your plan’s usage allocation. A response with extended thinking enabled typically consumes 2-5x the usage of a standard response. On Pro plans with limited usage, be selective about when you enable it. On Max plans, the higher allocation makes this less of a concern.

When to leave it off

For straightforward tasks — drafting emails, creating simple documents, answering factual questions — extended thinking adds latency without improving quality. Toggle it on only when the task genuinely benefits from deeper reasoning.

Artifacts

Artifacts are rich outputs Claude generates directly in the chat interface — rendered in a side panel so you can view the result while continuing the conversation.

What counts as an artifact:

• Code — scripts, functions, and programs with syntax highlighting and a copy button
• Documents — formatted text, reports, and structured content
• Spreadsheets — tables with data that you can review and download
• Visualisations — charts, graphs, and interactive data displays rendered as live components
• Interactive components — HTML/CSS/JavaScript applications that run directly in the panel (calculators, dashboards, interactive tools)
• SVG graphics — diagrams, flowcharts, and visual elements

How to use them:

• Ask Claude to “create” or “build” something visual — Claude automatically generates an artifact when appropriate
• Click the artifact to expand it in the side panel
• Ask for modifications — “make the chart a bar chart instead” or “add a column for variance percentage” — and Claude updates the artifact in place
• Download artifacts as files when you need them outside of chat

Limitations:

• Artifacts render in a sandboxed environment. They cannot make network requests or access external data — everything must be self-contained.
• Complex interactive artifacts may not work perfectly on the first attempt. Iterate with feedback.
• Artifacts are tied to the conversation. If you need to reuse one, download it or copy the code.

How operators actually use it

Build me a variance analysis comparing this month's actuals to budget. Use the numbers from the attached CSV. Format it as an Excel file with conditional formatting — green for favourable, red for unfavourable.

Claude builds the spreadsheet, applies formatting, and delivers it as a downloadable .xlsx file — all in the chat window.

Draft a board update covering Q1 performance. Pull the key metrics from our Notion workspace and format it as a slide deck.

With the Notion connector enabled, Claude reads your data and produces the deck.

What to watch out for

• Context window limits: Even on paid plans, very long conversations may lose earlier details. Start new conversations for new topics rather than running one endlessly.
• Artifact rendering: Some complex visualisations may not render perfectly on first attempt. Iterate — Claude improves with feedback.
• Connector permissions: Each connector requires separate authentication. Claude can only access tools you’ve explicitly connected.

Related

• Skills — the knowledge layer that makes chat smarter
• Connectors — linking Claude to your tools
• Cowork — when you need Claude to act autonomously
• First 30 Minutes — getting started walkthrough

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