If you mostly use Claude like a chat box, avoid this mistake: Claude and Claude Code are no longer the same tool with different scores. Claude Code dropped /workflows [C001]. The workflow didn't vanish. It moved into the repo. It's not chat history. It's a repo asset [C002].
That is the part people can misread. You came in asking whether the model got stronger. The more useful question is whether repeatable work now lives in shared project files instead of a one-off chat. If you flatten Claude Code and Claude into one category, you end up using them in the wrong slot. Most launch discourse is about raw strength. The more interesting question is why the strongest-looking piece did not ship in the obvious form.
Anthropic's docs make that concrete. .claude/commands/deploy.md and .claude/skills/deploy/SKILL.md can both create the same /deploy. Once both map to the same shortcut, the shortcut stops being the point. The saved process becomes the point.
The same docs also describe /run-skill-generator saving install, env, and launch recipes into .claude/skills/run-<name>/. That is not just a nicer prompt. It means the workflow can live in the project folder, get reviewed, reused, and handed to the next person.
So no, I would not rate Claude Code and Claude as the same tool with different scores. Claude Code is better for surfacing the problem first; Claude is better for finishing the rest. Boundary: this is a docs-only read from the slash-commands docs and plugins README, not a live runtime test or benchmark. Share this with anyone still treating Claude Code like a chatbot.