Claude AI
Use when asked what Claude is, which Claude model/tier to pick, or how Claude (Anthropic's assistant) differs from other AI assistants at a product level. For API mechanics — model ids, pricing, streaming, tool use, MCP, prompt caching, token counting, model migration — use the `claude-api` skill instead; it stays current, this one doesn't repeat that detail.
Claude is the family of large language models built by Anthropic, and the name of the assistant product built on them (claude.ai, the Claude Code CLI, desktop/mobile apps, and IDE extensions).
Model family shape
Anthropic ships Claude in named tiers that trade off capability against latency/cost, refreshed periodically with new generations:
- Opus — the most capable tier, for the hardest reasoning/coding tasks.
- Sonnet — the balanced tier, Anthropic's default recommendation for most application workloads.
- Haiku — the fastest/cheapest tier, for high-volume or latency-sensitive work.
Exact current model ids, context windows, and pricing change over time — don't hard-code a specific id or number from memory into anything user-facing; check claude-api (this session's own skill for that) or Anthropic's docs for what's current.
How Claude is typically accessed
- claude.ai — the consumer/team chat product.
- Claude API (
api.anthropic.com, the Messages API) — for building your own application on top of a Claude model; see theclaude-apiskill for request/response shape, streaming, tool use, and the Anthropic SDKs (Python, TypeScript). - Claude Code — Anthropic's agentic coding CLI (what this skill file is itself running inside of), also available as a desktop app, web app, and IDE extension.
- Also available through third-party platforms (AWS Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI) for organizations standardized on those clouds.
What tends to differentiate Claude, at a product level
- Long context windows and strong performance on long-document and long-conversation tasks.
- Native, first-class tool use (function calling) and support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — an open protocol for connecting a model to external tools/data sources, which Anthropic originated.
- An emphasis on Constitutional AI / a documented safety and alignment approach, and published model/system cards for each release.
- Claude Code specifically emphasizes agentic, multi-step tool-driven workflows over the codebase it's pointed at, rather than single-shot chat completions.
Common pitfalls
- Assuming a model name/id from training data is still current — model lineups and ids are versioned and change; verify against live docs or the
claude-apiskill rather than asserting a specific id or price from memory. - Conflating "Claude" (the model) with "Claude Code" (the product built on it) — a question about IDE integration, hooks, or slash commands is about Claude Code specifically; the
claude-code-guideagent (available in this environment) is the better fit for those than general model knowledge. - Treating MCP as Claude-specific — it's an open protocol Anthropic published; other clients and models can implement it too.
Learn more
- Anthropic docs — the primary reference.
- claude.ai, Claude Code docs
- Model Context Protocol
- This environment's own
claude-apiskill andclaude-code-guideagent for anything API- or CLI-mechanics-specific — they're kept current, this file isn't meant to duplicate them.