# Artifacts | Claude for Real Work

> When Claude builds the thing instead of describing it, how to steer something you can see on screen, and what publishing one really means.

Source: https://karakabakov.com/courses/claude-for-real-work/artifacts/

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# Artifacts

Lesson 07 of 28 · 9 min · Updated August 21, 2026

An artifact is a panel beside the conversation holding something substantial enough to stand on its own. Sometimes the answer is not a reply. It is a document, or a table, or a small working thing, and reading it as a wall of chat is the wrong shape.

An artifact is that. You can edit it, keep versions of it, download it, and publish it.

## When does an artifact appear?

Claude decides, on the basis that the content is “significant and self-contained, typically over 15 lines”, and is something you are likely to edit or reuse rather than read once.

You can also just ask, and asking is more reliable than hoping:

```
Put that in an artifact.
```

What one can be: a document in markdown, a code snippet, an SVG image, a diagram or flowchart, a single-page website, or an interactive component that runs in the panel.

The interactive kind is the one people underuse, so here is a concrete example. Ask for this:

```
Build me a small tool where I type in a count of stock on hand and a reorder level and
it tells me how short I am and colours it red if I am below. One page, no explanation,
just the tool.
```

You get a thing that works, in a panel, in about twenty seconds. Not a description of a thing, not instructions for building one. The thing.

## Steering it

Three ways to change an artifact, in increasing order of precision.

**Ask.** “Make the numbers bigger.” “Add a column for the bin location.” “Lose the heading.” Ordinary conversation; the panel updates.

**Edit a passage directly**, for a markdown artifact. Highlight the text, click **Edit with Claude**, and say what you want changed. That is much more precise than describing which paragraph you meant, and it leaves the rest of the document alone.

**Go back a version.** Every change makes a new version, the old ones are still there, and a version selector in the panel switches between them. This matters more than it sounds, because the failure mode of iterating on an artifact is making it worse in four small steps and not being able to say which one did it.

The rule that saves you: **when a change makes it worse, go back a version rather than asking for the change to be undone.** Asking for an undo produces a fifth version that is approximately the third, and you now have five things and no clean copy.

## Getting it out

Copy the contents, download the file, or click `Publish` and get a link. Publishing also files it under `Artifacts` in the sidebar, so you can find it again without hunting for the conversation it came from.

Three things to know before you publish anything:

- **Published means public.** Anyone with the link can view and interact with it, including people who have no Claude account. Read what is in the artifact before you make one.
- **Unpublishing is a one-way door.** An `Unpublish` button appears afterwards and revokes access, but once you have unpublished an artifact you cannot publish that same one again. Copy the link somewhere before you decide you are finished with it.
- **Some things need a setting.** Anything that runs code or creates files needs **Code execution and file creation** turned on, under `Settings > Capabilities`, or `Organization settings > Capabilities` on a work account where an administrator may have switched it off.

## What they are not

**Not a saved document.** An artifact lives in a conversation. If you need it next month, download it or publish it.

**Not connected to anything.** An interactive artifact runs in a sandbox. It cannot reach your files, your email, your systems or the internet, which is what makes it safe to run and also what makes it a toy for anything that needs live data.

**Not a replacement for the real tool.** The stock calculator above is useful for ten minutes of thinking. It is not your stock system, it has no data in it, and treating a tool that took twenty seconds to make as a thing you rely on is how spreadsheets happen to people.

That last one is not a warning against using them. It is a warning about the specific moment, three weeks later, when the throwaway thing has become load-bearing and nobody decided that it should.

## Your turn

Build something you would open twice.

Think of a small calculation or lookup you do by hand. A conversion, a threshold, a bit of arithmetic with two inputs, a checklist you tick through. Then:

```
Build me a single-page tool that does this: [describe it]. Two inputs, one clear
answer. No explanation, no instructions, just the tool.
```

> **Check 1:** it appears in a panel and it works. Type numbers in and get the right answer out, checked against doing it by hand once.

Now make it worse on purpose, then recover:

```
Make it much more colourful and add three more fields.
```

> **Check 2:** you dislike it, and you can get back to the version you liked using the version selector rather than by asking for the changes to be undone. If you cannot find the version selector, find it now, because the day you need it is the day you have made four changes and want the second one back.

Finally, download it or publish it, and open it somewhere outside the conversation.

> **Check 3:** it still works outside the chat. That is the difference between an artifact and an answer. If you published it, open the link in a private window where you are not signed in, and confirm it loads there too. That is what “public” means and it is better to find out on a stock calculator than on something else.

## Recap

An artifact is a panel holding something substantial: a document, a diagram, a page, or a small tool that runs. Ask for one rather than hoping.

Steer by asking, by editing a passage directly, or by going back a version. When a change makes it worse, go back rather than asking for an undo.

Published is public to anyone with the link, signed in or not, and unpublishing is permanent. Interactive artifacts cannot reach anything, which makes them safe and makes them useless for live data.

The risk is not building one. It is the throwaway tool quietly becoming load-bearing.

Next: connecting Claude to the tools you already use, and what that grants it.

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