Claude (Anthropic) - capabilities
The builder's and writer's model: reach for Claude when you want clean documents, real artifacts, and agentic work via Skills, MCP and Claude Code - not the flashy consumer all-rounder. Our view from 500+ client engagements; capabilities evolve quickly.
Best at
- Producing clean, well-structured long-form writing and documents
- Building real artifacts and working code (Claude Code)
- Agentic, tool-calling work via Skills and MCP connectors
- Long-context work over large documents and projects
- In-app Office creation (Excel / PowerPoint / Word) through plugins
Capability snapshot
| Capability | Verdict | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Office docs (Excel / PowerPoint / Word) | ✅ Strong | Creates and edits Excel, PowerPoint and Word through in-app plugins. |
| Code & building | ✅ Leads | Claude Code and Artifacts make it a standout for building and iterating on working software. |
| AI agents / tool calling | ✅ Leads | Auto-selects the right Skill and calls tools itself - a genuine agentic backbone. |
| Skills | ✅ Leads | Loads task-specific instructions and assets and picks them automatically. |
| Connectors / MCP | ✅ Strong | Native MCP (which Anthropic created) connects it to your tools and data. |
| Long documents / context | ✅ Strong | A large context window handles big documents and multi-file projects. |
| Custom assistants (Projects) | ✅ Strong | Projects bundle context and instructions for repeatable, grounded work. |
| Reasoning | 🟡 Capable | Competent, but we rate ChatGPT stronger for pure reasoning. |
| Web search | 🟡 Capable | Searches the web, but not our first pick for research-heavy browsing. |
| Voice | ⚠️ Weak | Mobile-only and behind ChatGPT's voice mode. |
| Image generation | ❌ None | No native image generation - pair with ChatGPT or Gemini for visuals. |
In Wouter's words
Take Excel or PowerPoint or Word formatting - Claude is extremely good at that. You don't need to use Excel anymore. ChatGPT or Copilot are way less good at that.
Where in ChatGPT you need to call your custom GPTs, inside Claude it figures it out itself… Claude is the front runner in building very good agents that know where to go. It's called tool calling.
Watch-outs
- No native image generation - pair with another tool for visuals.
- Voice is mobile-only and feels behind ChatGPT's.
- For pure reasoning we often still default to ChatGPT.
- Skills, MCP and Claude Code reward technical users - more setup than a plug-and-play chatbot.
Our take
Claude is the model we reach for when the output has to be genuinely good - clean writing, real documents, and working artifacts - and when you want serious agentic plumbing through Skills, MCP and Claude Code. It is less of an all-in-one consumer tool than ChatGPT: no native image generation, voice still mobile-only, and for raw reasoning we often default to ChatGPT.
You don't need to be able to work in Excel anymore - Claude is much better at it than you are.
- Wouter van Haaften, WAIMAKERS
Compared head-to-head