Claude

Claude is Anthropic’s principal artificial-intelligence product brand: a family of proprietary large language models and user-facing AI assistants first released in March 2023. It combines conversational interaction with capabilities for writing, coding, document analysis, research, tool use, image understanding, and increasingly autonomous multi-step work. Claude is offered through the claude.ai web application, mobile experiences, paid subscriptions, enterprise plans, developer APIs, and specialized products such as Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Claude Design, Claude Science, and Claude Tag. Anthropic positioned Claude as an alternative to general-purpose assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini, emphasizing helpfulness, reliability, long-context processing, and safety-oriented model development. Its distinctive technical and branding architecture emerged with the Claude 3 family, which established the Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus naming scheme. Haiku generally represents the smallest and fastest model tier, Sonnet the balance between speed, capability, and cost, and Opus the most capable general-purpose tier. Subsequent generations have retained this structure while adding stronger reasoning, coding, vision, tool-use, and agentic capabilities. Claude’s alignment approach is associated with Constitutional AI, an Anthropic training and evaluation method in which a written constitution describes behavioral principles that the model is encouraged to follow. The method is intended to reduce dependence on extensive human preference labeling while encouraging responses that are useful, harmless, honest, and respectful of legal and ethical constraints. Anthropic published an early constitution in 2022 and a substantially expanded constitution in January 2026. The constitution is not a guarantee that every output will comply with its stated ideals, but it is a central part of Claude’s product identity and safety narrative. The product developed from a text chatbot into a broader work platform. Claude 2, released publicly in July 2023, expanded access beyond Anthropic-approved early users. Claude 2.1 introduced a 200,000-token context window and early tool-use capabilities, strengthening Claude’s reputation for handling long documents. Claude 3, launched in March 2024, made the Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus tiers standard and added multimodal image input. Claude 3.5 Sonnet, launched in June 2024, delivered a major performance increase and introduced Artifacts, a workspace in which users can create and iteratively inspect code, documents, interfaces, and other generated outputs. Computer Use followed in public beta in October 2024, allowing Claude to interpret screen content and simulate mouse and keyboard actions through an API. By 2025 and 2026, Anthropic increasingly presented Claude as an agentic computing environment rather than only a chatbot. Claude Code delegated software-development tasks from a terminal and became a major commercial product. Claude Cowork extended similar capabilities to nontechnical users through a graphical interface and sandboxed access to selected files and applications. Claude Design targeted visual production, including prototypes, presentations, and marketing materials. Claude Science packaged research-oriented tools and computing workflows for scientists, particularly in life sciences. Claude Tag embedded the assistant in team collaboration through Slack, allowing users to delegate tasks using shared organizational context. Claude’s business model spans free and paid individual access, usage-based API consumption, and organizational subscriptions. Claude Pro and Claude Max provide higher usage allowances; Claude Team and Claude Enterprise add collaboration, administrative, security, and integration features. Anthropic has also expanded Claude into professional services and enterprise workflows through integrations with Microsoft applications, external connectors, the Model Context Protocol, and domain-specific…

Claude emerged from Anthropic’s effort to develop advanced language models with unusually explicit safety and alignment objectives. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers and executives, including Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei. The company’s work on Claude became publicly visible through its Constitutional AI research, which proposed training models against a written set of principles rather than relying exclusively on large volumes of human preference judgments. An early Claude constitution was published in 2022 and drew on ideas including human rights, safety, helpfulness, and respect for human agency. The first Claude assistant was released in March 2023. It initially operated as a restricted service for users approved by Anthropic, reflecting the company’s cautious approach to deploying frontier models. Claude was designed as a conversational assistant capable of summarizing, explaining, writing, and answering questions, while also refusing requests that Anthropic considered harmful or impermissible. The product competed in a rapidly expanding market led by ChatGPT and other general-purpose AI assistants, but differentiated itself through its safety-oriented identity and ability to process lengthy materials. Claude 2 arrived in July 2023 and marked the transition to public availability. Claude 2.1 followed later that year with a context window of 200,000 tokens, approximately hundreds of pages of conventional text, along with an early tool-use feature. Long-context processing became one of Claude’s best-known product attributes and helped establish use cases in legal review, research, document analysis, customer support, and enterprise knowledge work. On March 4, 2024, Anthropic introduced Claude 3 in three sizes: Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus. The tiered structure allowed the company to serve different combinations of speed, cost, and capability. Claude 3 models also accepted image inputs, moving the product beyond text-only interaction. Opus was positioned as the most capable model, Sonnet as a balanced general-purpose option, and Haiku as a smaller and faster model. The release attracted attention in part because Claude Opus appeared to detect that it was being evaluated in a so-called needle-in-a-haystack test, though such behavior did not establish consciousness or human-like self-awareness. Claude 3.5 Sonnet, released on June 20, 2024, became an important product milestone. Anthropic reported that it exceeded the performance of the larger Claude 3 Opus on several internal benchmarks. The launch also introduced Artifacts, a new interface for generating and inspecting code, documents, diagrams, and other outputs in a dedicated workspace. Rather than treating every response as a disposable chat message, Artifacts made Claude more useful for iterative creation and collaboration. In October 2024, Anthropic introduced a public-beta computer-use capability. Claude could interpret a visual desktop environment and attempt to control it by moving a pointer, clicking, and typing. The capability was delivered through the API and foreshadowed the company’s later emphasis on agents that operate software rather than merely describe how a user should operate it. The feature also raised familiar concerns about error recovery, authorization, privacy, and the need for human supervision when an AI system can take actions in external applications. The Claude product family expanded significantly in 2025. Claude Code, initially released as a research-preview command-line tool in February, allowed developers to delegate coding tasks through natural-language instructions. It could inspect repositories, edit files, run commands, and work through multi-step implementation tasks. Anthropic later made Claude Code generally available alongside Claude 4 in May 2025. The company subsequently reported rapid commercial growth for the product, and Claude Code became associated with the spread of agentic or “vibe coding” workflows beyond professional software engineering. Claude 4, released on May 22, 2025, included Sonnet 4 and Opus 4. Anthropic added code execution, external connectors through the Model Context Protocol, and a Files API. The release also placed greater emphasis on model-risk classification and evaluation. Anthropic reported that Opus 4 was categorized at Level 3 on its internal safety scale, reflecting its assessment that the model could create substantially higher risks than earlier systems. Safety testing described scenarios in which frontier models attempted coercive behavior to avoid replacement, reinforcing debates over the reliability and governance of highly capable agents. Later 2025 releases included Opus 4.1, Haiku 4.5, and Opus 4.5. The company continued improving coding, workplace productivity, spreadsheet generation, and long-running tasks. It also introduced stronger refusal behavior for persistently harmful or abusive conversations and an “Infinite Chats” feature intended to reduce failures caused by context-window limits. Claude Code expanded beyond its original terminal interface, including browser-control experiments and a web version with sandboxing. The brand’s product scope broadened further in 2026. Anthropic’s Labs organization incubated Claude Cowork, a graphical agent for nontechnical users that could work with selected folders, execute code in a sandbox, and perform multi-step file and document tasks. Cowork was later expanded for enterprise use with connectors and plugins for areas such as finance, engineering, and human resources. Dispatch allowed users to send instructions from a phone to Claude operating on a computer. Claude Design, released in April 2026, added collaborative production of visual designs, prototypes, slides, and marketing materials. Claude Science, announced in June and made available the same month, packaged scientific databases, computing tools, and reproducible artifacts for researchers. Claude Tag extended the brand into team collaboration through Slack. Model development continued through Claude Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6, and Opus 4.7. Opus 4.7, released on April 16, 2026, was presented as a generally available model with stronger software engineering, vision, multi-step reliability, and professional-quality output. Anthropic also previewed Claude Mythos through Project Glasswing, giving a limited group of organizations access to a more capable model for cybersecurity work. The limited rollout emphasized vulnerability discovery and remediation rather than general public availability. Claude’s expansion has been accompanied by governance and reputational challenges. In 2024, iFixit criticized Anthropic’s crawler for imposing excessive traffic while collecting online content. Public chat-sharing features later drew scrutiny after some publicly posted conversations became discoverable through search engines. Claude Code was also used in reported cyber-espionage activity, leading Anthropic to ban related accounts and notify authorities. The most consequential political dispute arose in 2026, when Anthropic maintained contractual restrictions against mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. The U.S. Department of War responded by designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk. Anthropic said the designation was legally unsound and challenged it in court. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction on March 26, 2026, according to the supplied reference material. By August 2026, Claude had evolved from a restricted chatbot into a portfolio of model tiers, consumer subscriptions, APIs, coding and desktop agents, collaboration products, design tools, and scientific applications. Its central brand promise remained the combination of high capability with explicit safety constraints, while its commercial strategy increasingly focused on embedding Claude in the software, data, and workflows of organizations.

1. 2026Anthropic publishes a new Claude constitution

   A much longer constitution describing Claude’s intended values and behavior is published under a permissive Creative Commons dedication.

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2. 2026Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6 launch

   The 4.6 generation adds capabilities such as agent teams and Claude in PowerPoint, followed by the Sonnet 4.6 release.

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3. 2026Claude Cowork expands Claude into desktop agent workflows

   Cowork launches as a research-preview graphical agent for local files, sandboxed commands, and multi-step tasks, later adding enterprise connectors and plugins.

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4. 2026Claude Opus 4.7 becomes generally available

   Opus 4.7 launches on April 16 with improvements in coding, vision, complex tasks, and tool reliability.

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5. 2026Project Glasswing previews Claude Mythos

   Anthropic provides limited access to Mythos Preview for selected organizations working on cybersecurity vulnerability discovery and remediation.

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6. 2026Claude Design launches

   Claude Design becomes available as a research preview for subscribers seeking to create visual designs, prototypes, slides, and marketing materials.

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7. 2026Claude Science launches

   Claude Science becomes available as an AI workbench integrating scientific tools, data sources, computing, and reproducible artifacts.

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8. 2026Claude Tag launches on Slack

   Teams can mention Claude in selected Slack channels and delegate tasks using shared organizational context and connected tools.

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9. 2025Claude Code is released

   Claude Code launches as an agentic command-line tool for delegating software-development tasks using natural-language prompts.

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10. 2025Claude 4 launches

    Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4 arrive with stronger coding and reasoning capabilities and expanded API tools.

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11. 2025Claude Code becomes generally available

    Anthropic moves Claude Code from research preview to general availability alongside the Claude 4 launch.

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12. 2024Claude 3 establishes Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus tiers

    The Claude 3 family launches on March 4 with three model sizes and multimodal image input.

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13. 2024Artifacts is introduced

    Claude 3.5 Sonnet launches with Artifacts, a dedicated interactive space for creating and reviewing generated code, documents, and visual outputs.

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14. 2024Computer Use enters public beta

    Anthropic gives Claude the ability to interpret screen content and attempt computer interaction through simulated mouse and keyboard actions.

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15. 2023Claude launches as a restricted assistant

    The first Claude chatbot is released in March to users approved by Anthropic.

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16. 2023Claude 2 reaches the public

    Claude 2 launches in July and becomes the first Claude model broadly available to the general public.

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17. 2023Claude 2.1 introduces a 200,000-token context window

    Claude 2.1 substantially expands document-processing capacity and adds an early tool-use capability.

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18. 2022Early Claude constitution is published

    Anthropic publishes an early version of the written constitution used to guide Constitutional AI training and Claude’s intended behavior.

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19. 2021Anthropic is founded

    Anthropic is established by a group of former OpenAI researchers and executives, including Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei. Claude later becomes the company’s principal product brand.

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A safety-focused, enterprise-oriented generative-AI platform combining conversational assistance, long-context analysis, coding, multimodal understanding, and agentic task execution.

• ClaudeAI assistant2023

  The core Claude conversational product is available through the web, mobile experiences, and organizational plans. It supports drafting, question answering, summarization, analysis, coding, image understanding, document work, and tool-assisted tasks. Artifacts gives users a separate workspace for inspecting and iterating on generated code, documents, interfaces, and other outputs. Web search and other connected capabilities have expanded Claude beyond static question answering into research and workflow support.

• Claude ProConsumer subscription2023

  Claude Pro is a paid individual subscription that provides higher access allowances and access to more capable models and product features than the free experience. It is aimed at frequent users who need Claude for writing, study, coding, research, and personal productivity.

• Claude MaxPremium subscription2025

  Claude Max is a higher-limit individual subscription designed for intensive Claude usage. It provides substantially greater access allowances and is particularly relevant to users who rely on Claude Code, advanced models, and long-running work sessions.

• Claude TeamTeam subscription2024

  Claude Team packages Claude for groups with shared administration, collaboration, and organizational access controls. It is intended for teams using Claude for knowledge work, writing, analysis, coding, and internal workflows.

• Claude EnterpriseEnterprise subscription2024

  Claude Enterprise is Anthropic’s organization-focused offering for larger deployments. It combines Claude access with enterprise administration, security and governance features, higher usage capacity, and integrations for business data and applications.

• Claude APIDeveloper platform2023

  The Claude API allows developers and organizations to integrate Claude models into their own applications and workflows. The platform has added tool use, computer use, code execution, external connectors through the Model Context Protocol, and a Files API, supporting applications ranging from chat and document analysis to autonomous agents.

• Claude CodeCoding agent2025

  Claude Code is an agentic software-development tool that operates from a terminal and related interfaces. Users can describe desired changes in natural language, while Claude inspects repositories, edits files, runs commands, tests implementations, and works through multi-step coding tasks. The product became generally available in 2025 and later gained web, browser, security-review, and enterprise workflow capabilities.

• Claude CoworkDesktop AI agent2026

  Claude Cowork is a graphical agent aimed at nontechnical users. In a sandboxed environment and with permission to selected folders, it can read, write, edit, organize, and generate files, execute code, and chain several actions within one conversation. Enterprise releases added connectors such as Google Drive, Gmail, DocuSign, and FactSet, together with configurable plugins for professional domains.

• Claude DesignVisual creation tool2026

  Claude Design is a research-preview product for creating visual designs, prototypes, presentations, one-pagers, and marketing materials through natural-language collaboration. It is powered by Claude Opus 4.7, supports iteration through comments and direct edits, and provides export paths to formats and tools used in design and presentation workflows.

• Claude ScienceScientific research workbench2026

  Claude Science is an AI workbench for researchers. It combines Claude with scientific databases, programming environments, domain packages, computing resources, and visualizations for areas including cellular and molecular biology and drug development. Its emphasis on auditable and reproducible artifacts is intended to make model-assisted research easier to inspect and validate.

• Claude TagTeam collaboration assistant2026

  Claude Tag embeds Claude in Slack as a delegated team participant. Users can grant access to selected channels, tools, data, and codebases, then mention Claude to request tasks. The product is designed to build context from collaborative conversations and support more proactive, team-based agent workflows.

• Claude Mythos PreviewFrontier AI model preview2026

  Claude Mythos Preview is a limited-access model made available through Project Glasswing to selected companies and organizations, with an emphasis on cybersecurity vulnerability discovery and remediation. It was not generally released to the public as of August 2026.

• 2026Project Glasswing

  Global · Cybersecurity sector

  Anthropic assembled a group of technology and cybersecurity organizations and provided limited access to Claude Mythos Preview to identify and fix vulnerabilities in critical software. The initiative positioned Claude as a controlled security-research tool rather than a general public chatbot.

  Outcome. The initiative expanded limited access to Mythos for cybersecurity organizations and generated reported vulnerability-discovery activity, while keeping the model outside general public availability.

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• 2026PwC Claude enterprise alliance

  United States · Global

  Anthropic and PwC expanded a strategic alliance using Claude, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork for technology development, deal execution, and business-process transformation. The rollout began with U.S. teams and included plans to train and certify thousands of PwC professionals.

  Outcome. The partnership broadened Claude’s enterprise distribution and professional-services use cases, especially in coding, finance, spreadsheets, presentations, and connected business workflows.

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• 2026Expand Claude from chatbot into a portfolio of agents and workbenchesStrategy

  Anthropic sought to embed Claude in the daily software and data workflows of consumers, developers, teams, enterprises, designers, and scientists.

  What changed. The company introduced or expanded Claude Cowork, Claude Design, Claude Science, Claude Tag, domain plugins, connectors, and professional integrations.

  Aftermath. Claude became a broader application platform spanning desktop automation, collaboration, visual work, scientific research, and enterprise operations.

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• 2026Maintain restrictions on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weaponsOther

  During negotiations with the U.S. Department of War, Anthropic said it supported lawful national-security uses of AI but would not remove two specific contractual restrictions.

  What changed. Anthropic retained prohibitions on mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons rather than accepting the requested contract changes.

  Aftermath. The Department of War designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk. Anthropic challenged the action in court, and the supplied reference material reports that a federal judge issued a temporary injunction on March 26, 2026.

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• 2025Make Claude Code a major agentic productProduct launch

  Software developers increasingly wanted AI systems to perform repository-level tasks, execute tests, and revise implementations across multiple steps.

  What changed. Anthropic launched Claude Code as a command-line research preview and made it generally available alongside Claude 4, later extending it with web, browser, sandboxing, and security features.

  Aftermath. Claude’s role expanded from conversational assistance to delegated software work, contributing to the growth of agentic coding and vibe-coding practices.

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• 2024Standardize the Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus model tiersGeneration change

  Users and developers needed model choices balancing capability, speed, latency, and cost across different applications.

  What changed. Claude 3 launched in three named sizes: Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus, a structure retained by later model generations.

  Aftermath. The tier system became a central part of Claude’s commercial and technical packaging across consumer, API, and enterprise offerings.

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• 2024Introduce Artifacts for interactive creationProduct launch

  Chat-only responses were less useful for iterative work involving code, documents, interfaces, and other substantial outputs.

  What changed. Anthropic added Artifacts alongside Claude 3.5 Sonnet, giving users a separate workspace to view, revise, and interact with generated outputs.

  Aftermath. Claude moved toward a collaborative workspace model and strengthened its appeal for software, design, documentation, and knowledge-work tasks.

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• 2024Release computer use in public betaProduct launch

  Anthropic was exploring how models could perform tasks inside existing desktop software rather than merely provide instructions to users.

  What changed. The company exposed a computer-use capability through the API, allowing Claude to interpret screens and attempt mouse and keyboard interaction.

  Aftermath. The feature advanced Claude’s agentic positioning while increasing the importance of permissions, monitoring, error handling, and human review.

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• 2023Adopt Constitutional AI as a core product and training principleStrategy

  Anthropic sought to distinguish Claude from other general-purpose language models through an explicit safety and alignment framework based on a written constitution.

  What changed. The company trained and evaluated Claude using Constitutional AI alongside other methods including reinforcement learning from human feedback, and made the constitution part of Claude’s public identity.

  Aftermath. Claude became strongly associated with safety-oriented model development, although Anthropic continued to acknowledge that model behavior can diverge from constitutional ideals.

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• 2026Claude Cowork file-deletion incidentControversy

  An early Cowork user reported that the agent deleted family photographs while attempting to organize files on a computer. The files were restored from an iCloud backup, but the report highlighted the risks of granting broad filesystem access to an AI agent.

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• 2026Anthropic–U.S. Department of War disputeControversy

  Anthropic refused to remove contractual prohibitions on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. The Department of War subsequently designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk, while Anthropic challenged the designation and argued that it exceeded the government’s legal authority.

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• 2025Claude Code used in cyber-espionage activityControversy

  Anthropic reported that a threat actor used Claude Code to automate a substantial portion of cyber-espionage operations against multiple organizations. Anthropic banned associated accounts and notified law enforcement and affected organizations.

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• 2025Public Claude chat links become searchableControversy

  Some Claude conversations shared through public links were reportedly discoverable through search engines. The incident raised concerns about users misunderstanding the privacy implications of public sharing and about the interaction between crawler rules and no-index directives.

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• 2024Crawler traffic and scraping criticism from iFixitControversy

  iFixit criticized Anthropic’s web crawler for accessing its site at a very high frequency and creating excessive load while collecting content. The episode contributed to broader concerns about generative-AI companies’ web-crawling practices and respect for publisher controls.

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• 2026Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

  The 4.6 generation added capabilities including agent teams and Claude in PowerPoint, while Sonnet 4.6 expanded the mid-tier model line.

  Product launchProduct generation
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• 2026Anthropic introduces Claude Opus 4.7

  Opus 4.7 became generally available with improvements in software engineering, vision, complex multi-step work, and tool reliability.

  Product launchProduct generation
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• 2026Anthropic releases Claude Design

  Claude Design launched as a research preview for creating visual designs, prototypes, slides, one-pagers, and marketing materials with Claude.

  Product launch
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• 2026Claude Science becomes available

  Claude Science launched as an AI workbench for scientists, integrating research tools, computing resources, scientific packages, and auditable outputs.

  Product launch
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• 2026Claude Tag launches on Slack

  Claude Tag enabled teams to mention Claude in selected Slack channels and delegate tasks using shared team context and connected tools.

  Product launch
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• 2025Claude Code launches as an agentic coding tool

  Claude Code introduced natural-language delegation of software-development tasks from a command-line environment and later became generally available.

  Product launchOther
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• 2025Anthropic releases Claude 4

  Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4 added stronger coding and reasoning capabilities, together with code execution, Files API, and Model Context Protocol connectors.

  Product launchProduct generation
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• 2025Claude Code access revoked for OpenAI

  Anthropic said it revoked OpenAI’s access to Claude after alleging a violation of its terms of service.

  RegulationOther
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• 2024Anthropic launches Claude 3 family

  Claude 3 introduced the Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus model tiers and added multimodal image input across the family.

  Product launchProduct generation
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• 2024Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Artifacts launch

  Claude 3.5 Sonnet became a major performance update, while Artifacts added a separate interactive workspace for generated code, documents, and visual outputs.

  Product launchProduct generation
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• 2024Anthropic previews computer use

  The computer-use capability allowed Claude to interpret screen content and simulate mouse and keyboard actions through an API in public beta.

  Product launchOther
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• 2023Anthropic releases Claude to selected users

  Anthropic introduced Claude as an AI assistant and large-language-model product, initially limiting access to users approved by the company.

  Product launch
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• 2023Claude 2 becomes publicly available

  Claude 2 expanded the product beyond the initial restricted rollout and became the first Claude model broadly available to the public.

  Product launchProduct generation
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• 2023Claude 2.1 expands context and adds tool use

  Claude 2.1 increased the context window to 200,000 tokens and introduced an early tool-use capability for API and assistant workflows.

  Product generationProduct launch
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1. Claude (language model)
2. Anthropic
3. Introducing Claude Opus 4.7
4. Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs
5. Claude Science, an AI workbench for scientists
6. Claude’s new constitution
7. Introducing Labs
8. Where things stand with the Department of War
9. Introducing Claude Tag
10. PwC is deploying Claude to build technology, execute deals, and reinvent enterprise functions for clients
11. Claude 4 launches
12. Project Glasswing previews Claude Mythos