Everyone keeps asking me the same thing since ChatGPT Work landed: am I switching? The better question is how to use BOTH.

Here's what actually happened, and why it's bigger than either tool. 

Old ChatGPT answered your questions and drafted text in a chat. You still took that text and went and did the actual job yourself.

I was in Claude the other day trying to connect Metricool, and it wasn’t there. Not every tool you run your business on has a listing in Claude’s official directory, and for a while I assumed that meant copy-pasting data manually forever. It doesn’t. If a tool has an MCP server, official or third-party, you can add it yourself as a custom connector, no code required.

Try to remember the last time Claude told you one of your ideas was bad. Not gently improved. Not "here's a stronger version." Bad. A flat "I wouldn't do that." Most people, when they go looking, come up empty. It has definitely happened to me before, but I can count on one hand how many times, and I use Claude A LOT.

Your week as a solo founder is a stack of small jobs that all need doing and all land on you: sort the folder that's become chaos, write and create your content, turn a page of messy notes into a proper document, work through the replies sitting in your inbox.

Saved prompts still need you at every step. Here’s how solo founders turn their best prompts into AI systems that run whole functions; no code required.

A few weeks ago, I typed one sentence into a fresh chat: “I want to write a blog post about the difference between a Claude Skill and a Custom GPT.” Nothing else. 

Claude told me it was triggering two things: 

1. My blog writer Skill

2. My brand playbook Skill

A while back I signed up for an AI course that was well structured, well produced, and taught by someone who clearly knew what they were doing. I firmly believe that there’s nobody who knows all there is to know about AI and business, and I’m so happy to learn from those who are further ahead than me.

Most AI use case content is written for a different kind of business than yours. And I hope that by me saying that, you can finally exhale.

The content is usually for bigger businesses with bigger budgets, departments, tools most solo founders would never pay for, and the problems that come with all of that. So the use cases on offer are things like proposal automation, lead scoring, sales call analysis, and meeting summaries. Real problems, for that kind of business.

Back before connectors were a thing, I was using Claude to help me write client emails. I had the context in my head, typed it all out, Claude drafted the reply, and I copied it over to Gmail myself. Every time.

We tell Claude things all day. Our offers, how we like responses formatted, the project we’re in the middle of, and the way we want to be spoken to. And it’s easy to assume all of that is going into one ‘big brain’, so that wherever you open Claude, it just knows you.

Every Monday morning, a report lands in my inbox. It tells me which blog posts are gaining traction, which are stalling, which are getting impressions but no clicks, and exactly what to do about each one. It includes a VA task list with the wording for every change and a strategic priority list for the week.

I've bought a fair few AI courses because I’m not naive enough to think that there’s anyone on the planet who knows all there is to know about AI, and I’m so happy to learn from those who are further ahead than me.

If you've been using Claude regularly, you've probably noticed the "+" icon in the chat bar and may or may not have wondered what it does;

I see the same thing over and over when I look at how solo founders are actually using AI in their businesses.

They've done a lot of the right things. They've probably set up Projects, GPTs, Skills, loaded in some context, added examples of their voice, maybe connected a tool or built a workflow. They're getting decent output. And because of that, they're thinking that's about as far as it goes.

Claude Skills and Custom GPTs look similar, but they work completely differently. Here's the comparison table and when to build which one.

Most people use Claude the same way: open a new chat, explain the context, get the output, copy the output, close the tab. Do it again tomorrow.

The problem isn’t Claude. It’s that you’re doing all the setup work over and over again. Every session, from scratch.

I’ve built more than 40 Custom GPTs and converted every single one to Claude Projects or skills. The first time I did it, I copied the instructions straight across and started chatting. The output was fine. Technically fine. But noticeably flatter than what the GPT had been producing, which is the opposite of what you’re hoping for when you switch platforms.

Most AI advice was written for businesses with teams. Yours probably doesn't. You're the marketing team, the sales team, the customer service team, and the one trying to remember if you replied to that DM from Tuesday. So when you read "how to use Claude for business," most of the use cases don't fit your week. Here's what does: not just faster work, but entire functions running in the background that you couldn't justify hiring for and never had time to build yourself.

I’ve been using Claude alongside ChatGPT for months now. I build products on both platforms. I run my entire blog, my content systems, and a good chunk of my business strategy through Claude. And I can tell you honestly that the first time I used it, I didn’t get it. It felt different from ChatGPT in ways I couldn’t pin down, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

Claude is a genuinely powerful AI tool for business, but it works differently from ChatGPT in ways that matter. The biggest things new users need to know: usage limits run on a rolling window (not a daily reset), Projects and Skills are the features that make Claude transformative for business use, and Claude responds best to longer, more detailed prompts upfront rather than the short back-and-forth style most people learn on ChatGPT.

I remember the first time I opened Claude.

I’d been building on ChatGPT for months. Over 40 custom GPTs. A full product suite. Daily workflows I could run with my eyes closed. ChatGPT was home.

Then I started testing Claude for a writing task, and the output quality stopped me mid-scroll. It sounded like a person wrote it.