Artifacts: Things You Keep

Conversation is useful and gone when you close the tab. Artifacts are the other thing Claude makes: substantial work that opens in its own window, keeps every version, and leaves with you. What becomes an artifact and what should not. Asking for a document rather than a reply. Iterating without losing the one sentence you cared about - batching changes, naming what must survive, and using the version history instead of describing a repair. The difference between copy, download and publish, and the uncomfortable afternoon that teaches most people the difference. And the chapter almost nobody tries: building a small working tool - a quote calculator, a checklist, a form - from a single prompt, and still using it a year later.