Eight Newer Claude Features, Tried on Real Work · Lesson 4 of 8

Build a mini app for your office

20 minutes. Works on: all plans for building and using one. Saving data and connecting to your other apps need a paid plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise).

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Every office has a sticky note on a monitor somewhere. The questions to ask a new caller. The steps to close up at night. The rough math for a ballpark price. It works until someone new answers the phone, or the note falls behind the desk.

Claude can turn that sticky note into a small working tool: boxes to tick, places to type, a result at the bottom. You describe it in plain English, and Claude builds it. I call these mini apps. Anthropic calls them artifacts, and its help center describes them as "small interactive tools."

• June 21, 2024: Anthropic introduced Artifacts in Claude.
• July 25, 2025: Anthropic let people build and share apps that use Claude inside them, in beta on the free, Pro and Max plans, with Team and Enterprise added on July 31. At first they couldn't save anything.
• September 16, 2026: Anthropic changed how artifacts work. Ones made before that date are now "legacy." They keep working and can still be shared, but new ones are made the new way.

Today, according to Anthropic's help center:

• Anyone can build one, on any plan, as long as Cloud code execution and file creation is on in Settings > Capabilities.
• On paid plans, a mini app can save text, up to 20 MB per artifact, text only. The person who builds it decides what each user keeps privately and what everyone shares.
• On paid plans, it can read your connected apps. Each person uses their own connections, not yours.
• It can use Claude itself, for example to tidy rough notes into a summary. Anthropic says no API keys are needed, and each person's use counts against their own plan. A new tool asks your permission the first time it wants to use Claude.

Pick a job that happens every day, by more than one person, where mistakes come from a forgotten step.

• A new-caller checklist. The questions to ask on every no-heat call, with a short summary at the bottom to paste into your scheduling system.
• An estimate range calculator for one service, built from your own price list, for staff to use on the phone. It gives a range. A person still writes the quote.
• An opening and closing checklist for a shop or front counter.
• A one-page job board. Paste this week's job list and see it grouped by day and status.

None of these replaces your real software. They fill the gap between "ask Claude a question" and "buy a new program."

Know these before your team relies on one.

• Everyone who opens it needs a Claude account. Anthropic says people without one "can't open a shared artifact, even with the link." So a mini app is a tool for your staff, not a calculator for your website. (If you want a tool your customers use inside ChatGPT or Claude, that's a different thing: see [MCP Apps, Explained](/articles/mcp-apps-explained).)
• Shared means shared. With shared storage, everyone who uses the tool sees the same data. Claude asks you to confirm the first time. Keep customer details to what the job needs. Never card numbers, passwords, door codes or health information.
• Tools that use Claude or your connected apps can't go out by public link. And people invited from outside your organization can't use those parts.
• Sharing depends on your plan. Pro and Max can share by link and invite people by email (a beta). Team plans can share with named people or with everyone in your organization; a public link needs your owner to turn on external sharing. Anthropic's pages disagree about link sharing on the free plan, so check the Share button on your screen.
• Don't count on version history. Anthropic's help pages don't describe one for artifacts. Keep your own copy of the request that built the tool. That's what the recipe card is for.
• It can break. If something goes wrong, Claude shows a Try fixing with Claude button, and Anthropic says success isn't guaranteed. That's why you test it first.

Before you build, write one paragraph on the Mini App Recipe Card: who uses it, what they type in, what it shows, and what it must never save. This paragraph does three jobs. It's what you paste into Claude. It's your backup if the tool ever breaks. And it's how the next person understands what the tool is for.

At Comfort Zone, Tina's recipe looked like this:

> Build a small interactive tool for our office: a new-caller checklist for no-heat and no-cooling calls. Whoever answers the phone uses it during the call. Show these questions as checkboxes, each with a short answer box: Is the system running at all? Gas or electric? Any smell of gas? (If yes, show a red box that says to tell the caller to leave the house and call the gas company, and to call Marcus.) Age of the system if they know it. Any pets? Gate or door code needed? (Don't record the code; just tick yes.) Best time to call back. Under that, a notes box. At the bottom, a three-line summary of the answers that we can copy into our scheduling system. Big, easy-to-read text. Don't save anything; it starts empty every time.

Notice what's in it: the real questions from the sticky note, the one safety rule that matters most, and a plain "don't save anything."

• Paste the recipe into a new chat.
• When the tool opens, try it. Ask for changes in short, specific requests: "make the gas question the first one," "bigger checkboxes."
• Test it on three real past calls, with made-up names. Did it ask everything the technician needed? Ask the person who answers the phone most what's missing.
• Update your recipe card with any change you kept.

• Team plan: share it with the people who answer the phone, or with everyone in your organization. Leave external sharing off.
• Pro or Max: invite only the coworker who'll use it. Keep the first one simple, since the parts that use Claude or connected apps don't work for people invited from outside an organization.

Then give it an owner (the person who fixes it) and a review date 90 days out. Write both on the recipe card.

Once the checklist works, try one step up:

• Let it remember. An opening checklist can save what's been done today. Start with personal storage, where each person sees only their own entries. Move to shared only when the whole team needs to see the same list, and keep customer details out of it.
• Let it use Claude. The summary box can ask Claude to turn the notes into clean sentences. Each person's use counts against their own plan.
• An estimate range calculator. Paste your real price list into the recipe, ask for a range, not a price, and have it say "estimate, not a quote" on screen. Test it against five past jobs and what you actually charged before anyone uses it on the phone.

• Find one sticky note, laminated sheet or "ask Tina" job in your office.
• Fill in the Mini App Recipe Card, including what it must never save.
• Build it in a chat and adjust it with short requests.
• Test it on three past cases with made-up names.
• Share it with one coworker inside the business, and write the owner and review date on the card.

Check it worked

• The tool got three real past cases right, and the person who does the job agreed nothing was missing.
• You know exactly what it saves (for a first tool, nothing) and who can see it.
• Your recipe paragraph is saved in your own document, not only in the chat.

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Next: Claude inside the spreadsheet you already use.

→ Lesson 5: Claude inside your spreadsheet and slides

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