Two ways customers use your product

Both ways serve individuals and teams alike. What differs is how people work.

Through conversation. A connector links the AI assistant to your server. The customer adds it, signs in, and then simply asks the AI for help. The AI calls your server, and your server decides what that customer has paid for.

A connector can be added on its own. You can also package it in a plugin, which bundles skills, connectors and subagents into one package, so the customer sets everything up at once.¹ There are no screens to build, but the customer has to know what to ask.

Through a guided app. Many people will never write a good request to an AI. They need a screen with buttons, tables and a guided workflow. On Claude, such an app can be an Artifact that calls Claude.² On Claude and on OpenAI, your server can also show its own screens inside the chat.³,⁴

The app sits on top of the same server and calls the AI to do the work each time someone uses it. On Claude, an Artifact can use connectors on the Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise plans, and each person connects their own apps, even in a shared Artifact.⁵

Both ways use the same server. Build the first, and the second is an addition, not a rewrite. But reusing the server does not solve distribution. You still have to get the product to each customer, set it up and keep it updated.

Setup is an important obstacle to adoption. Before anything works, each customer usually has to add your connector and sign in. In a company, an owner must first turn on connectors for the organization. Each person then signs in separately, unless the connector uses one shared credential.⁶

On Claude Team and Enterprise, an administrator can authorize a connector once for everyone through enterprise-managed authentication. It works only if your connector supports it.⁷

For someone who has never done this, setup is a real hurdle, and it falls on the non-technical users a guided app is meant to reach. Write a short setup guide. Then test, in a real customer workspace, how a customer receives the product, turns it on and gets updates.