Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs are not artifacts. Claude produces those through its separate file creation capability and returns them as downloadable files rather than rendering them in the artifact window.

Creating Your First Artifact

Creating an artifact is as simple as having a conversation. Just describe what you want, and Claude will determine whether to present it as an artifact.

For example, you might say:

• "Create a flowchart showing our customer onboarding process"
• "Build an interactive dashboard that lets me input monthly expenses and see a breakdown"
• "Design a landing page for a productivity app with a hero section and feature list"
• "Write a project brief template I can reuse for new initiatives"

If Claude doesn't automatically create an artifact when you expect one, you can explicitly ask: "Create this as an artifact" or "Show me this in an artifact."

When Claude generates an artifact, it appears in a dedicated window to the right of your conversation. From here, you can:

• View different formats: Toggle between a preview (how it looks) and the underlying code
• Copy content: Click the copy icon to grab the content for use elsewhere
• Download files: Save the artifact as a file to your computer
• View code: See exactly what Claude generated under the hood

Sharing and Publishing Artifacts

Once you've created something useful, you have several options for sharing it.

Copy or download: For personal use or sharing via other channels, use the copy or download buttons in the lower right corner of the artifact window.

Share within your organization (Claude for Work): Team and Enterprise users can share artifacts internally with colleagues. The shared artifact stays within your organization and requires team authentication to access.

Publish publicly: For free, Pro, and Max users, you can publish artifacts to make them accessible to anyone with the link. When you publish:

• Only the selected version becomes public (your chat remains private)
• Anyone can view and interact with the artifact without a Claude account

To publish, click the "Share" or "Publish" button in the upper right corner of the artifact. You can unpublish at any time by returning to that artifact and removing public access. Note: When you publish an artifact, it is publicly accessible via its link — anyone can view it, even without a Claude account. Published artifacts are not indexed by search engines, so they won't appear in Google results.

Tips for Getting the Most from Artifacts

Be specific about what you want. "Build a budget tracker" is good, but "Build a monthly budget tracker where I can input expenses by category, see a pie chart breakdown, and get a warning when I'm over budget" is better.

Describe the end user. Telling Claude who will use the artifact helps it make appropriate design choices. "This flowchart is for new employees" leads to different results than "This flowchart is for the engineering team."

Iterate incrementally. Ask Claude to add one feature or make one change at a time. This makes it easier to identify what's working and catch issues early.

Request artifacts when needed. If you ask for something substantial and Claude responds in the chat instead of creating an artifact, just say "Please create that as an artifact."

Lesson Reflection

Before moving on, consider:

• What recurring work could benefit from having an interactive artifact you can reuse?
• Are there processes in your work that would be clearer as a flowchart or diagram?
• What prototype or tool would help you test an idea quickly?

What's Next

In the next lesson, you'll learn about Skills — reusable instruction sets that teach Claude specialized workflows.