Step-by-step guide
🧩 Claude
Anthropic
📘 Step-by-step guide 📘 Anthropic · Claudebeginner 🔄 Life & Business

How to use Claude Artifacts to create and preview your work

A beginner‑friendly walk‑through for generating documents, summaries and simple apps that appear live beside your Claude chat

4 min read·5 steps·24 June 2026

Hook: By the end of this guide you’ll be able to ask Claude to produce a document, a summary or even a tiny web‑app and see the result instantly beside the chat – no coding experience needed. This is for anyone who wants a quick, visual way to turn ideas into finished pieces.

✅ Before you start
  • An Anthropic account – you need a login to access Claude.
  • A modern web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox…) – the interface works best on a desktop or laptop.
  • A piece of text or an idea you’d like to turn into a document, summary or simple app.
1

Open Claude and start a new chat

Log in at [claude.ai] and click the button that looks like “+ New chat”. This opens a fresh conversation window where you can type your first prompt.

💬 Try typing this**Example:** “Hi Claude, I’d like to draft a one‑page thank‑you letter for a neighbour who helped me move.”➤
2

Turn on the **Artifacts** pane

In the chat toolbar look for an icon that resembles a small paper stack or a rectangle with a “play” symbol – that’s the Artifacts button. Click it to reveal a side pane where Claude will display any document, image or code it creates.

💬 Try typing this**Example:** After clicking, the pane appears on the right side of the screen, labelled “Artifacts”.➤
3

Write a clear **prompt**

A prompt is simply the instruction you give Claude. Keep it short, specific and include the word “artifact” so Claude knows you want a visual output.

💬 Try typing this**Example:** ➤
Create a thank‑you letter artifact for my neighbour, Emma, who helped me move my sofa on Saturday. Use a friendly tone and keep it under 200 words.
4

Let Claude generate the **artifact**

Claude will process the prompt and, once it finishes, the finished letter will appear in the Artifacts pane. You can scroll, copy or download it directly from there.

💬 Try typing this**Example:** The pane shows a nicely formatted document titled “Thank‑You Letter to Emma” with the text you asked for.➤
5

Use the **live preview** to see changes instantly

If you want to tweak the letter, simply add a follow‑up prompt like “Add a sentence thanking her for her coffee.” Claude updates the same artifact, and the preview refreshes in real time. The same workflow works for other artefacts – a summary of a news article or a tiny HTML app that calculates a tip.

💬 Try typing this**Example:** ➤
Now make a separate artifact that summarises the key points of this article: https://example.com/article

Claude creates a second artifact, a concise bullet‑point summary, shown side‑by‑side with the original chat.

⚠️ Common mistakes
  • Forgetting to enable the Artifacts pane – Claude will still give you text, but you won’t see the visual preview.
  • Using overly long prompts – Claude’s context window (the amount of text it can remember at once) is limited; break complex requests into smaller steps.
  • Not saving or copying the artifact – the pane shows a live view, but if you close the chat the work disappears unless you download it.
🚀 Try it now

Open Claude, enable the Artifacts pane, and type: 

Create a short thank‑you note artifact for a friend who baked me a cake. Keep it under 100 words.

Press enter and watch the document appear beside the chat – you’ll have a finished piece in less time than it takes to brew a cup of tea.

✦ Original step-by-step guide by AI World Co.'s AI editorial team. Written in plain language, reviewed for accuracy.

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