Asking for the wrong artifact costs you a session, and three tiles side by side make it easy to do.
- Ask for a Doc when
- The deliverable is prose someone will read and comment on: a plan, a spec, a brief, a review, meeting notes, a written argument.
- Ask for Slides when
- The deliverable is a deck you will present or send. Slides is built for it: it asks for a design system before you start, and exports to PowerPoint with the text still editable.
- Ask for Design when
- The deliverable is screens, flows or graphics on a canvas of artboards you can rearrange by hand.
- Stay in chat when
- You want an answer, not a document. A quick question gets a better reply in the conversation than as a one-paragraph artifact you now have to manage.
The honest limits
- It is a writing surface, not a source of truth. It cannot know whether what it wrote is accurate unless you gave it the material
- The review loop rewards specific asks. Vague comments on vague paragraphs produce vague edits
- A doc you brief once and never revisit is just text. The value is in the second and third pass, which is also true of a design review
The test worth applying
Ask whether anyone will comment on this. If yes, it is a doc. If it is going on a screen in front of people, it is a deck. If nobody will ever open it again, it is a chat message, and making it an artifact has only given you filing to do.
You can choose the right artifact
- Know when a doc beats a chat reply
- Know when to reach for Slides or Design instead
- Know where the doc loop stops being useful
Course complete. The Claude Slides course covers the deck half of this decision.