Claude vs Raycast

Claude is an AI assistant built by Anthropic, designed for professionals and operators who need more than a generic AI response. It tends to follow complex instructions more completely, sounds less generic, and holds onto more context when you give it a lot to work with. There's also Claude Code for developers and Claude Cowork, a desktop agent that works with files on your machine.

I'll be honest, I resisted trying Claude for a while. I'd been using ChatGPT for two years and it knows me and my writing style incredibly well. Every time I tried Claude before really committing to it, I was disappointed because it just lacked that context, and I'd walk away thinking "I don't get what everyone's talking about!" But the hype kept coming from people I respected, so I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing something.

What changed it for me was exporting all of my writing instructions from ChatGPT and loading them into Claude as a skill. After that, the experience improved dramatically. Claude started asking better questions and the writing output got a lot closer to what I actually wanted. Now I find myself reaching for Claude specifically when I'm doing deeper writing work. It pauses to ask clarifying questions more than ChatGPT does, and it genuinely seems to honor the context I've given it rather than just acknowledging it and moving on.

Is that because Claude is naturally more thoughtful, or because my prompt told it to ask more questions? Honestly, hard to say. Without the skill loaded in, my earlier experience was nowhere near as impressive as the internet made it sound. So if you're going to try Claude and you already have a strong writing brief (or any other brief) somewhere, move it over before you form an opinion.

Where it still falls short is the surrounding product experience, the Chrome extension, the cross-device memory in Cowork. Those feel like areas where ChatGPT has just gone a lot deeper on the day-to-day user experience, and you notice the gap when you hit them. For now I'm keeping both, especially because I use ChatGPT Atlas for browser work.

• Automatically references your skills and writing briefs without being told to
• Longer context window means it holds onto more when you give it a lot of input
• Claude Code is loved by engineers

• Chrome extension has no memory, close it accidentally and everything is gone
• Cowork context doesn't persist across devices
• Usage limits are annoying, we hit them fast doing deep research on the standard tier
• Cowork is less useful if your whole workflow lives in web apps

Claude gives more complete answers without turning into an endless refinement loop. ChatGPT has a habit of ending every response with "want me to improve this?" and you end up going in circles. Claude just answers, and the conversation tapers naturally unless you push it further.

Claude automatically references your writing brief or skill in every relevant chat without you asking. With ChatGPT you have to actively add chats to a project to get that same behavior. It's a small thing that ends up mattering a lot when you're opening new chats constantly throughout the day.

Cowork is Claude's desktop agent, it can take actions across your computer, work through tasks, and integrate with your tools. If you work heavily out of local folders and project files, you'll probably get a lot out of it. For me, my whole workflow lives in apps like Superhuman Mail, Linear, and Granola, so it hasn't been life-changing.

Claude Tag is Claude inside Slack. Instead of opening Claude in a separate app, your team can tag @Claude in a Slack thread and ask it to help. It can read the conversation, understand what people are talking about, and jump in with ideas, answers, or next steps. We've covered it in more detail in the full Claude Tag review.

But heads up, right now it's limited to team (5 seat minimum) and enterprise plans.

• Free: Limited access, good for testing the product before committing.
• Pro: $20/month. This is the tier most founders and operators will want. Gives you access to the full model and the features that actually matter for daily work.
• Max: $100/month. Higher usage limits and more capacity for longer, more intensive sessions. Worth considering if you're hitting limits regularly.
• Team: $30/month per user (minimum 5 users). Adds collaboration features and admin controls for teams.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. Expanded security, compliance, and deployment options for larger organizations.

Raycast is a macOS productivity app that replaces Spotlight search with something a whole lot more useful.

Instead of just searching your computer, it turns your Command + Space shortcut into a command center that can open your apps or access AI, but also resize windows and run snippets.

Most people are fine with the native Spotlight search on Mac, and if you're only opening apps a few times a day, you might not care.

But once I got used to Raycast, it feels weird to go without it. Search became the main way I started to move around my computer, and Raycast made the search bar way more useful than Apple ever did.

We originally started using Raycast for the non-AI features. Clipboard history, emoji search, snippets, Caffeinate, color picker, app launching, and all of that became part of my daily workflow before AI was even part of the conversation.

It's one of those apps that doesn't exactly sound "sexy," yet has a huge impact on your productivity.

• One shortcut replaces the clunky "open app, find thing, copy thing, paste thing" dance
• Clipboard history alone solves a workflow problem that hits me all day
• Team snippets let us share links, messages, and business details across computers
• Free version is genuinely useful, so there's no real downside to trying it
• Beautiful UI and a deep extension ecosystem that replaces a bunch of separate tools

• Raycast AI feels underwhelming if you want deep, context-aware AI work
• Snippets and team features won't add much if your team has no repeatable language or links
• Mac only

I truthfully cannot live without this one.

It's the feature that made Raycast stick for us. Normally your Mac only remembers the last thing you copied, but with Raycast you can pull up your full clipboard history and paste any of it.

So when I copy a link, then another link, then a piece of text, I'm not bouncing back through tabs to re-copy something I already had. It sounds unimportant until you realize how often it saves you.

Snippets are saved pieces of text you reuse without rewriting them, like UTMs, our business mailing address, and NDA language.

The team version is what sold us on paying after using the free version for ages, because Alex and I can share the same snippets across both our computers.

If your business has recurring sales, ops, hiring, or partnership messages, it's genuinely worth it. If your team doesn't have repeatable language, it won't do much for you.

The developer community and growing library of extensions is something I wish more tools had.

I'd much rather compress an image through a Raycast plugin than go to some sketchy image conversion site, which I totally haven't done before. It means a lot of little tasks stay inside your launcher instead of scattering you across random apps and websites.

• Free: $0/mo. Best for most individual Mac users who want...
• Pro: $10/mo, or $8/mo billed annually at $96/yr. Best for power users who care about sync or want Raycast AI built into your launcher.
• Pro + Advanced AI: $20/mo, or $16/mo billed annually at $192/yr. Best for users who specifically want access to more advanced AI models.
• Teams Pro: $15/user/mo, or $12/user/mo billed annually at $144/user/yr. Best for small businesses if shared snippets and commands become part of daily operations.
• Teams + Advanced AI: $25/user/mo, or $20/user/mo billed annually at $240/user/yr. Best for teams that want access to the most advanced AI models.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, billed annually. Best for larger organizations that need advanced security and admin controls.