# Claude

> Claude is the AI assistant made by Anthropic: you chat with it in plain language and it helps with writing, analysis, and more.

**Category:** Claude

**Claude is an AI assistant built by Anthropic.** You talk to it in plain language, in a [chat](/glossary#chat), and it helps you write, summarise, analyse, plan, and build. Under the hood it runs on a [model](/glossary#model): Claude is the assistant you actually use, the model is the engine inside it.

Claude comes in a few models and on several plans, from a free tier to business ones. What makes it useful at work is simple: **give it context and a clear ask, and it does the heavy lifting while you keep the final say.**

## At work

Paste a long email thread and ask Claude for a three-line summary and a suggested reply. It reads the lot in seconds and hands you a draft you can tidy and send.

## Often confused with

The model. Claude is the assistant you chat with; the model (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus, Fable) is the trained engine inside it.

## Related terms

- Model
- Chat
- Prompt
- Generative AI

## See it in a lesson

[First steps in Claude](/en/learn/getting-started-with-claude/first-steps-in-claude)

## Further reading

- [Claude (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%28language_model%29): Background on Claude and the company behind it.
- [Meet Claude (Anthropic)](https://www.anthropic.com/claude): Anthropic's own overview of what Claude is and does.
- [Getting started with Claude.ai (Help)](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12997377-getting-started-with-claude-ai): A first walk through the Claude app.

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Last updated: 24/07/2026  
Source: Rollo Academy glossary