2.5 How both AI vendors realize it

In everyday life. Two phone companies both sell small, medium and large plans, but the names and limits differ. You compare what each plan does for you, not what it is called.

Anthropic, as verified 12 October 2026. Chat and tasks. From 16 September 2026, one Claude conversation routes between answering and tasks (Chapter 1). It reaches Pro and Max plans first. Free and Team plans follow, and Enterprise admins get at least 30 days' notice.¹² Until the change reaches them, Team and Enterprise keep chat and Cowork separate.³ A task is briefed, runs and ends (Chapter 1). For recurring work, Claude offers scheduled tasks on paid plans. They run remotely, even while your computer is asleep, unless a task needs files or apps on your computer.⁴ For work that continues between conversations, Claude Tag, in beta on Team and Enterprise, takes on work when someone tags it in a team conversation. It remembers context across days.⁵ Chapter 9 compares both with an always-on agent.

Projects hold standing instructions and a knowledge base of files for one area of work, on every plan. Team and Enterprise members can share them.⁶ Memory saves facts as topics you can read, edit or delete in Settings, and each project has its own. It is on by default on Free, Pro and Max. On Team and Enterprise, owners decide.⁷ Connectors link Claude to other apps. The Google Workspace connectors reach Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive. By default, Claude asks you before it sends an email or shares a file.⁸ Skills are folders of instructions, scripts and resources that Claude loads when a task needs them. Anthropic provides some, such as skills for Word and Excel files, and you can add your own. Skills follow an open standard, so they are not only for Claude.⁹ Code execution and file creation, a setting that is on by default, lets Claude write and run code in a sandbox. It works out numbers and builds spreadsheets, documents and other files.¹⁰ Skills need this setting turned on.⁹ Research, on paid plans, runs several searches that build on each other, across the web and connected apps, and returns citations.¹¹

Artifacts open beside the conversation as documents, slide decks, designs, dashboards or small tools that you can edit, return to and share. You can ask for one in any chat, or start one from a template. Since 8 October 2026, the Docs, Slides and Design templates are on every plan, including Free.¹²¹³ Dashboards are in beta on paid plans, and Motion, for animations, is in beta on Team and Enterprise.¹³ In Claude Docs, a team writes a document together with Claude in real time.¹⁴

Claude's models each have a job.¹⁵

• Haiku, the fastest and lowest-cost, for high-volume steps, such as sorting documents or pulling data out of them.¹⁶
• Sonnet, for speed and capability in everyday work, such as writing and data analysis.
• Opus, for complex agent work and enterprise work. Anthropic's guide for developers says most workloads start with it.
• Fable, the most capable model open to all customers, for work that runs for hours, such as research that ends in a finished report.

The current versions are Haiku 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1. Anthropic's models overview lists every model, with its price for developers.¹⁶ One model menu next to the send button sets the model and its effort level, and you can change both at any point.¹⁷ Anthropic advises that tuning effort often works better than switching models.¹⁵

OpenAI, as verified 6 to 12 October 2026. Chat, Work and dots are described in Chapter 1. Chat is for quick questions. Work is an agent for longer, multi-step work that delivers documents, spreadsheets, presentations, reports and Sites.¹⁸ Projects keep related chats, files and instructions together, and can be shared.¹⁹ From a project you can start a Work task that uses the project's context.¹⁸ Memory keeps saved memories that you can review, correct and delete, and a second setting uses past chats.²⁰ In ChatGPT, connectors are called apps.²¹ A skill packages instructions, resources and optional scripts, so ChatGPT or Codex can follow a workflow reliably. Skills follow the same open standard as Claude's.²² Deep research, chosen from the tools menu, proposes a research plan you can edit, then returns a report with citations.²³ Space, launched 29 September 2026,²⁴ is a home for pages and files. Collaborators edit the same page, each with their own ChatGPT. Sharing a page does not give other people access to your private chats or memory. Anything written on the page is visible to everyone who can view it. Space is on Pro, Business and Enterprise plans.²⁵ Chat and Work have separate model pickers. On Business plans, you choose a reasoning level in chat, from Instant to Extra High, or Pro.²⁶ Work and Codex, OpenAI's coding agent, use their own models, with a Default option that sets the model and reasoning level together.¹⁸ OpenAI's page on ChatGPT Business models and limits lists the models and their usage limits.²⁶

The differences that change a decision. Three matter.

1. Where model choice is made. On Anthropic's Pro and Max plans, one model menu sets the model and effort for a conversation that covers both answering and tasks. On Team and Enterprise, chat and Cowork stay separate for now, so check the model in each. On OpenAI, chat and Work use separate model pickers, so the model you tried in chat may not be the one that runs the task. On either AI vendor, record the model and effort for each surface the worker uses.
2. Where shared output is kept. Both AI vendors let a team share a project for standing context. For a document the team edits together, Anthropic offers Claude Docs and OpenAI offers Space. A Claude doc is an artifact, saved with your other artifacts. On Team and Enterprise plans, a Claude doc cannot yet be shared outside the organization.¹⁴ In Space, each colleague brings their own assistant. Decide where the AP Worker's register is kept, and who can see it, before the first run.
3. Tier names do not match one to one. Compare models by the job each AI vendor gives them, from fastest and cheapest to most capable, and by your own tests, never by name.

The invariant. The product names differ, but the way you decide does not. Choose the surface by how much of the work you hand over, the rung on Chapter 1's ladder. Choose the output by what you need to keep afterward. Add each feature, such as a connector or a skill, for the job it does. Choose the model by balancing capability, speed and cost, and test your choice on your own cases. Write the surface and the model in the Role Contract as runtime needs. Then you can change either one without changing the role or what it may do. You still retest the new setup.