The 5 Layers of Claude: A Plain-English Guide for Creators

Anthropic has shipped a lot in the last year. Skills. Cowork. Claude Design. Claude in Excel. Claude in Chrome. Artifacts. MCP. Claude Code. Each one is genuinely useful. None of them are obvious to a creator who just wants to know which tool does what. Here's the 5-layer framework that maps every Claude product to the job it does.