Claude 2.0: conversations and artifacts

As verified on November 5, 2026.

Two places to work

The Claude desktop app has two main places to work.

Conversations. One conversation now does everything. You no longer choose between chatting and handing off a task. You describe what you want, and Claude decides whether a quick answer is enough or whether the request needs real work. Anthropic used to call that working mode Cowork. It now happens inside any conversation, and this book calls it simply a task.¹,² A quick question gets a quick answer. A request for research, a report, a spreadsheet or a presentation becomes a task that searches, reads files, runs code, and returns editable files in the same conversation. Several tasks can run at once.

In a conversation Claude can:

• Work with your files. It can read, organize and create files in a folder on your computer that you grant it.
• Use a browser. It can open pages, read them, click and fill in forms, in the app's built-in browser or in your own Chrome through Claude in Chrome.
• Use your computer. With computer use, it can click, type and move between apps on your screen.³
• Use your apps. Connectors to apps such as Google Drive, Gmail, Microsoft 365 and Slack work during tasks. Skills teach Claude how you want a job done, and plugins bundle skills and connectors for a role.
• Draw in the conversation. Charts, diagrams and small interactive visuals appear inside the reply.
• Keep going without you. Tasks continue in the cloud if you close your laptop, and recurring tasks can run in the cloud on a schedule. Work that needs your local files, the built-in browser or computer use needs the desktop app open.
• Follow you to your phone. Tasks started on the desktop appear in the mobile app, where you can answer questions, redirect the work or start something new.

One setting governs how freely Claude acts in the whole conversation. Auto lets Claude work without asking at each step, with automated safety checks before each action. Manual asks before each action. You can change it at any time, and you can stop or redirect Claude while it works. By default Claude asks before permanently deleting files.⁴,⁵

Because Claude now picks the route itself, this setting carries real weight. One request can start a task that uses a connector, then a browser, then your screen, without a separate step where you choose to hand the work over. If you want to see each action before it happens, choose Manual. Chapter 7, The Authority Envelope, teaches how to match each permission to what a worker may do.

Code. The Code tab is Claude Code inside the desktop app. Despite its name, it is not only for programmers. You talk to it in plain language, and many people who use it never read the code it writes. Many of the newest features appear here, and most of the rest of this section describes it. Part III teaches it properly.

New artifacts: documents, slides, designs, dashboards and motion

An artifact is a piece of finished work that gets its own window beside the conversation: something you keep, edit, present or share, not just read once. Artifacts work in conversations and in the Code tab. Five new kinds join the familiar pages, diagrams and small tools:

Docs, Slides and Design are the most widely available. Dashboards and Motion are in beta on higher plans.⁶,⁷

Three properties make artifacts more than files:

• They start private. You decide whom to share them with.
• They can be live. On paid plans an artifact can read from and write to connected apps, and keep its own data between visits. Each person who opens it connects their own apps.
• They can think. An artifact can call Claude itself, so a shared tool can answer questions or coach its users. Each person's use counts against that person's own plan, not the creator's. The From Skills to Income page shows why that matters if you want to sell what you build.