15th March 2026
Generation 1 vs Generation 2 AI
What changed — and why it matters
The landscape
Generation 1
The ChatGPT Era · 2022–25
Free / Constrained
Gen 1a
Whatever your organisation provides by default.
Shorter context, weaker models, no memory.
Limited by design.
Free ChatGPT, free Claude, basic Copilot, bundled tools
Free tools build foundational skills, and that has value. But they set a low ceiling on what people expect from AI. If you can, skip straight to Pro. If free is all you have, know that what you’re seeing is a fraction of what’s possible.
Pro / Competent
Gen 1b
Good general-purpose applications.
Dramatically more capable than the free tier —
longer context, stronger models, useful features.
Paid versions of Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT
My strong recommendation: Claude
Generation 2
The Claude Code Era · 2026 +
Agentic / Frontier
Gen 2
General-purpose agents that can interact with your computer.
They don’t just answer questions —
they read files, write files, pursue objectives, and complete
entire workflows independently.
They loop — reading, thinking, writing, then reading their own output and going again —
which is how they handle long and complex work.
Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Google Gemini CLI
My strong recommendation: Claude Code
↓
How each generation productises
Gen 1 → GPTs and Skills
Packaged prompts
Productised as GPTs or skills — packaged prompts for single tasks.
You work out how to research a company, save the prompt, reuse it for the next one.
One task, one prompt, one output.
Gen 2 → Skills, Agents, and Packages
Packaged workflows
Productised as longer and more complex skills, but also agents,
also packages of tools — all mixed together.
I built a process that researches every nightclub in a market, scores them on
multiple dimensions, and produces a live dashboard. Then reran the whole thing
in one click for completely different industries:
↓
A dual strategy
Two moves that help an organisation work better, quicker, and happier with AI.
1
For the many
Pro / Competent · Gen 1 tools
Free
→
Pro
Move less-engaged people from constrained, default tools to competent use
of good general-purpose applications. This in itself is a big return
on investment.
2
For the best
Agentic / Frontier · Gen 2 tools
Pro
→
Agentic
Accelerate your best people with agentic tools.
They’ll build workflows that deliver outsized impact —
and those workflows become reusable for everyone else.
This framework maps which tools your people use. A separate question is how mature your organisation is at capturing value from them — from individual productivity through to new revenue. The organisational diagnostic measures that.
For the full breakdown of what good, poor and advanced usage looks like across all three tiers, see the AI Usage Spectrum.