Claude seems to be this year’s AI pick, just like NotebookLM was last year’s. I’m still a relatively new user but it’s already made a big difference in how I approach research and studying. Long study sessions aren’t as prone to becoming cluttered chats, and it’s much better at handling long-form documents while retaining nuance and consistency. Add Artifacts and better organization on top of that, and it starts to make ChatGPT look more like a general-purpose assistant than a study tool.

What surprised me most is how good Claude is at analyzing files, including documents and images, too. This alone puts it ahead of ChatGPT for the design coursework I’m doing. Claude can handle everything I’m working with at each stage of a studying session or project, from brainstorming and ideation to research and prototyping. Here’s why I’ve been reaching for Claude over ChatGPT these days…

Claude is better at handling long-form content

And it stays consistent for longer

When my ChatGPT chats start getting long, the AI seems to forget context and gets a little weird. Just today, it actually repeated one of its older responses to me word-for-word, which had nothing to do with the prompt I gave it. Claude is better at handling content at scale and over the long-term.

Keep in mind that I am using the free version, so my prompt count is capped at around 25-40, but I get 100,000 tokens per prompt which is about 200-300 pages worth of text. This is plenty for me as a casual solo user, and it’s actually more than I get with the free version of ChatGPT.

What really sold me is the consistency over time. Claude doesn’t start to forget the context of the chat, which is much more reliable for coursework. Granted, it’s not as personable and conversational as ChatGPT, but it does excel at summarizing and analyzing long messages and documents without going off-track or just completely hallucinating.

Claude excels at analyzing files

I can feed it nearly anything

The free version lets me upload up to 30MB per file per message, which is more than enough. And Claude supports a wider range of file types than ChatGPT, including PNGs, PDFs, Markdown, CSV, DOCX, HTML, and much more. Not only does it support more formats, but it’s also much better at scanning and analyzing them.

I actually export my design frames straight out of Figma and Penpot, and it can read the image and draw highly accurate conclusions about the design specs, even when I don’t include the specs in a text file or prompt. It also scans and accurately summarizes my screenshots that have text thanks to its advanced OCR. This is invaluable for design work, and ChatGPT doesn’t come close.

Claude has Artifacts

Its secret weapon

I don't see myself paying for and using Claude Code, and presumed that would completely limit its coding abilities for me. But Artifacts proved me wrong. Artifacts are separate content windows meant for keeping specific tasks contained so they don’t clutter up chats. And this is how I get Claude to create previews and prototypes of my designs for coursework.

While Artifacts don’t give you the advanced features from Claude Code, like a full software development space where you can run code directly in the editor, it does use code to build your prototypes. It also lets you download, share, and edit the code, which allows me to iterate on a project outside of Claude.

I also like that Artifacts come with several templates, some of which are UI-specific, as well as prompt recommendations, which is the perfect way for newbies to get started. Beyond design, I highly recommend checking out Claude’s Artifact templates because some of them are actually really useful and fun. There’s a design tutor, an attachment style quiz, writing assistants, entertaining games, a piano, and my favorite is the “tough grass” section - it’s a great replacement for doomscrolling.

Claude has organizational features

Keeping my projects structured

ChatGPT does have some organization features, namely Projects, but Claude’s organization just feels a bit smoother. For starters, I like that you can show or hide all of your recent chats - an underrated feature to help keep clutter at bay. You can also view your chat collection from where you can multi-select them for deletion or bulk-adding to projects. Then there’s Projects, which is similar to ChatGPT’s. It’s a minimal window with a list of all your content, into which you can sort artifacts and chats by theme or project.

Claude has an edge over ChatGPT

I’m still keeping ChatGPT in my toolkit because there are some things it does better than Claude, like real-time search and custom tones. But for study materials, Claude pulls ahead. It consistently outperforms with long-form content, file scanning, and its prototyping abilities are almost non-existent in ChatGPT. So far, it’s been the perfect study companion and assistant.