What are Claude Artifacts and Projects?

Artifacts and Projects are two of the features that make Claude feel more like a workspace than a chat box. Artifacts is a dedicated side panel where Claude renders substantial outputs, a document, a block of code, a working mini-app, so you can see it formatted, edit it, and have Claude revise it in place rather than scrolling through chat. It is available even on the free plan and is one of the reasons Claude free feels capable.

Projects, available on Pro, are persistent workspaces that group related chats, uploaded files, and custom instructions around a single topic or piece of work. Claude keeps that context across sessions, so it remembers your project's background, style, and documents without you re-explaining every time. For ongoing work (a book, a codebase, a client account), this continuity is a real productivity gain.

Together they change the interaction model: Artifacts for producing and refining concrete deliverables, Projects for maintaining long-running context. If you use Claude for sustained work rather than one-off questions, both are core to the experience, and Projects is a meaningful part of the Pro upgrade case.

Our Claude Projects prompts guide covers how to set these up for the best results.