General Assistants

What belongs in this category

The general assistant is the default tool of this era, which makes the category hard to judge: they all write, all answer questions, and all claim to reason. The real differences are context window, how well they follow a long instruction set, and whether the vendor ships agent tooling alongside the chat window. Pick one as a daily driver and stop there.

Narrow it down

Start with these

• ChatGPT — The default general-purpose assistant, now with agents and deep research.
• Claude — Long-context writing and code work with a strong editing instinct.