Lesson 152 · 2 min
Artifacts: small apps and documents made in chat
Ask Claude for something you will use, like a checklist, a chart or a tiny calculator, and it can build it in a panel beside the chat.
Normally a chatbot answers with text that scrolls away. With an artifact, Claude puts the finished piece in its own panel next to the conversation, so you can read, copy or use it while you keep chatting.
Artifacts can be documents, diagrams, web pages, charts or small interactive tools. A shop owner might ask for a price calculator with a discount box. A teacher might ask for a ten-question quiz that marks itself. Claude writes the code behind it, and you simply see the working result.
You change it by talking. Say "make the buttons bigger", "add a column for tax" or "translate it into Vietnamese", and Claude updates the same artifact. Each change becomes a new version, so you can go back if a change makes it worse.
Treat an artifact like a first draft from a quick helper. Test the buttons, check any numbers it calculates, and do not put private customer data into something you plan to share.
Do it now
Build a tiny tool in one message
- 1. Open Claude and paste the prompt below, filling in your own idea.
- 2. When the artifact appears, try every button and input.
- 3. Ask for two changes, one about looks and one about how it works.
Make a simple interactive tool as an artifact: [DESCRIBE IT, e.g. a tip splitter for a group dinner]. Keep it on one screen, with large buttons that work on a phone. Explain in two lines how to use it.
Quick check
Words from this lesson
- Vibe coding
- Building software by describing what you want to an AI and accepting its code, often without reading it closely.
- Generative AI
- AI that produces new text, images, audio, video or code, rather than only sorting or scoring existing things.