If you’ve seen the search terms “Claude AI”, “Claude Anthropic”, or “What is Claude” popping up everywhere lately, you’re not alone. Claude is one of the fastest-growing AI tools in the world right now, and it’s become such a core part of how I run this site that I thought it was worth writing about honestly — what it actually is, who makes it, and how I use it day to day.
So, what is Claude?
Claude is an AI assistant made by a company called Anthropic — not Anthropothic, which is a common misspelling, but Anthropic. Anthropic is one of the most significant AI companies operating right now, with a valuation of $380 billion and annualized revenue of $30 billion. They built Claude to be a helpful, honest, and thoughtful AI — and in my experience, it really does feel different to some of the alternatives.
Claude is available at claude.ai, as a desktop app, as a mobile app, and as an API for developers. You don’t need to be technical to use it — you just sign up, start typing, and it responds like a very capable (and very patient) assistant.
How much does it cost?
The free plan requires no credit card and covers web, iOS, Android, and desktop access with text, image, and code generation, web search, and desktop extensions — subject to daily usage limits. For anyone wanting to use it more heavily, Claude Pro costs $20 per month and gives you around five times more usage than the free plan, which is what I use. There are also higher tiers — Claude Max at $100–$200 per month for very heavy users, and Claude Team at $30 per user per month for businesses.
For most people just dipping their toes in, the free plan is a perfectly good starting point.
What about Claude Code and Claude Cowork?
You might have also seen “Claude Code” trending. Claude Code is an agentic coding tool that reads your entire codebase, writes and edits files, runs commands, and commits to git autonomously — it’s mainly aimed at developers and software engineers. That’s not really my world, but it’s become enormous in the tech space.
Claude Cowork is a desktop tool included with the Pro plan — it’s designed for non-developers to automate file and task management, which is much more my kind of thing.
How I actually use Claude for Daily Waffle
Here’s where it gets practical, because I think a lot of people are curious whether AI tools are genuinely useful for content creators — or just a gimmick.
For me, Claude has become the backbone of how I produce content for this site. Here’s what a typical week looks like:
Article research and drafting — When I spot a trending story, I drop the URL into Claude and ask it to help me draft a publish-ready article in Daily Waffle’s tone. It fetches the source, pulls the key facts, and structures a piece that I can review, tweak, and publish. What would take me an hour or two to research and write takes a fraction of the time. Last week, alone I’ve covered the Peaky Blinders sequel, the James Bond casting race, the FA Cup Final, the Southampton spying scandal, the K-Pop Demon Hunters world tour, the 2026 World Cup of Darts, and Eurovision — things I genuinely care about, but couldn’t cover at that volume without help.
Social media content — Every article I publish also gets repurposed into Instagram carousels, Facebook captions, and Pinterest content. Claude formats these to a consistent structure: hook-led captions, exactly five hashtags, eight-slide carousel copy. I just tell it which article and which platform, and it gives me ready-to-use copy.
Trending topic awareness — When I notice breakout search terms on Google Trends — like the ones that prompted this very article — I can brief Claude on the keywords I want to target and it weaves them naturally into titles and body copy. It understands SEO in a way that doesn’t feel forced.
Batch content — Some weeks I’ll sit down for a couple of hours and batch out five or six articles and all the accompanying social content in one session. That kind of output would have been genuinely impossible for a solo creator without a team behind them a few years ago.
Is it perfect?
No — and I think it’s important to be honest about that. Claude doesn’t know what I haven’t told it. It can’t replace editorial judgement, your own voice, or the decision about what’s actually worth covering. I still have to direct it, review everything it produces, and make calls about what fits the site. Think of it less like a robot doing your job and more like a very fast, very organised research and writing assistant who never complains and never needs a lunch break.
But for a lifestyle and general interest site like Daily Waffle — where volume, variety, and timeliness all matter — it’s honestly been a game changer.
How do I get started?
If you’re curious, just head to claude.ai and sign up for free. You don’t need any technical knowledge. Start with something simple — ask it to help you draft an email, summarise an article, or brainstorm ideas — and see how it feels. Most people are surprised by how natural it is to use.
It’s not magic. But it’s pretty close.
Photo by MART PRODUCTION: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-person-typing-on-a-laptop-7718632/