Claude Projects vs Artifacts vs Skills: What Each One Does
Claude projects, artifacts and skills explained side by side: what each one holds, when Claude uses it, which plans include it, how sharing works, and how the three fit together in real work.
Projects, artifacts and skills are three of Claude's most used features, and three of the most often confused. They sit in different places in the work: a project is where the context lives, a skill is how Claude knows to do a particular kind of task, and an artifact is what Claude produces.
This guide explains each one from Anthropic's help center, compares them side by side, and shows how they work together.
Key takeaways
- Projects are workspaces with their own chats, files and instructions. Claude uses that knowledge in every chat inside the project.
- Skills are folders of instructions, scripts and resources that Claude loads only when a task needs them, in any conversation.
- Artifacts are the outputs: documents, decks, designs, dashboards and small apps you can edit, find again and share.
- In Anthropic's words, projects provide "static background knowledge," while skills provide "specialized procedures that activate dynamically when needed."
At a glance
| Projects | Skills | Artifacts | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A workspace with its own chats and knowledge base | A packaged procedure for a type of task | Something Claude made that you would show someone |
| What it holds | Documents, files, instructions and chat history | Instructions, scripts and resources | A document, deck, design, dashboard, diagram or small app |
| When Claude uses it | In every chat inside the project | When a task calls for it, in any conversation | Claude creates one when the output is substantial and reusable |
| Plans | All plans; up to five projects on Free | Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise, with code execution on | Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise |
| Sharing | With members of your organization, on Team and Enterprise | Organization Owners can provision skills for everyone | By link, email invitation, organization or group, depending on plan |
Projects: where the context lives
The help center describes projects as "self-contained workspaces with their own chat histories and knowledge bases." Inside a project you can:
- Upload knowledge. Documents, text, code and other files that Claude uses "to better understand the context and background for your individual chats within that project."
- Set instructions. For example, a formal tone, or answering from the point of view of a role or industry.
- Work with more material. On paid plans, when project knowledge approaches the context limit, Claude switches to retrieval to expand capacity "by up to 10x."
On Team and Enterprise plans, a project can be shared with specific people, added in bulk, or opened to the whole organization, with Can view or Can edit access.
The new version of projects
Anthropic is rolling out a redesigned version of projects, starting with Claude Code (beta, on select Pro and Max accounts). In it, "a project is one conversation": you describe what you need, and Claude splits the work into parallel threads that run in the cloud and continue after you close your laptop. Each thread starts with the project's files, repositories, instructions and memory, and a Library collects the files you add and the artifacts Claude produces. Anthropic says chat, Cowork, Team and Enterprise will follow.
Skills: how Claude does a task
Skills are "folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude loads dynamically to improve performance on specialized tasks." Claude reviews the skills available, loads only the relevant ones and applies them, which Anthropic calls progressive disclosure: it keeps the conversation from carrying instructions it does not need.
There are four kinds:
- Anthropic skills, such as enhanced document creation for Excel, Word, PowerPoint and PDF, used automatically when relevant.
- Custom skills that you or your organization write, for example applying brand guidelines to presentations or following a company email template. Anthropic notes that simple skills need "no coding," since they are written as instructions in Markdown.
- Organization skills, provisioned by Owners on Team and Enterprise plans so they appear for every member.
- Partner skills in the Skills Directory, from companies such as Notion, Figma and Atlassian, built to work with their connectors.
Skills follow the Agent Skills open standard published at agentskills.io, so "the same skill format works across AI platforms and tools that adopt the standard." They also work in Claude Code.
Artifacts: what Claude produces
An artifact is "anything Claude makes for you that you'd put in front of someone: a design, a deck, a document, a dashboard, or a small interactive tool." It opens beside the conversation and is saved to the Artifacts tab, so you can find it from any chat.
Artifacts can start from templates for Docs, Slides and Design, plus Dashboards and Motion in beta. They can be edited directly or by asking Claude, exported (docs to Word, PDF, Markdown or Google Docs; decks to PowerPoint, PDF or Google Slides), and shared according to your plan. For the details, see What are Claude artifacts?
How the three work together
Take a quarterly planning task:
- A project called "Q4 planning" holds last quarter's numbers, the strategy document and an instruction to write for the leadership team.
- A skill with your company's presentation format and brand rules tells Claude how a deck should look.
- Claude produces the deck as an artifact, which you edit, export to PowerPoint and share with your team.
Each feature handles one part: the project supplies context, the skill supplies method, the artifact is the result.
Skills compared with other Claude features
Anthropic's help center draws three distinctions:
- Skills vs projects: "Projects provide static background knowledge that's always loaded when you start chats within them. Skills provide specialized procedures that activate dynamically when needed and work everywhere across Claude."
- Skills vs MCP: "MCP connects Claude to external services and data sources. Skills provide procedural knowledge." The two work together: MCP gives Claude access to tools, skills teach it how to use them.
- Skills vs custom instructions: custom instructions apply to all conversations, while skills "only load when relevant."
Which one do you need?
| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| Give Claude background documents for a body of work | A project |
| Make Claude follow the same method every time it does a type of task | A skill |
| Get a document, deck, design or small app you can share | An artifact |
| Share context and chats with colleagues | A shared project (Team and Enterprise) |
| Roll out a standard procedure to a whole organization | An organization-provisioned skill |
| Let people use a tool built with Claude | An artifact, shared by link or invitation |
Frequently asked questions
Can I use projects on the free plan?
Yes. Projects are available to all users, and free accounts can create up to five.
Do skills only work in Claude?
No. Skills use the Agent Skills open standard, so the same format works in other tools that adopt it. Within Anthropic's products, skills work in Claude and in Claude Code, and in beta for API users through the code execution tool.
Are artifacts saved inside a project?
Artifacts are saved to the Artifacts tab in your sidebar, which you can open from any conversation. In the new version of projects, the project's Library also collects the artifacts Claude produces.
What is the difference between artifacts and skills?
An artifact is an output, the thing Claude made. A skill is an input, the instructions Claude follows to make it well.
