Claude vs ChatGPT vs monday.com Expert (Surprise Result)

What Did We Ask ChatGPT & Claude To Build?

A full client and project system in monday.com, set out in one long prompt written by Gemini. ChatGPT and Claude got the exact same prompt while we built it by hand. We had read it first, so it wasn't a perfectly fair test.

The prompt asked for two connected boards in a dedicated folder. Client Master tracks client name, account manager, SLA tier, total contract value and client status. Project Delivery tracks task name, assignee, timeline and task status, linked to the client each task belongs to.

On top of that it wanted two automation rules, a business days formula with colour coding, guest permissions and a dashboard. Where a native feature couldn't meet a requirement, the AI had to state the limitation and give the most efficient workaround.

How Do You Link A Client Board To A Project Board In monday.com?

With a two-way Connect boards column. We added one to Client Master, pointed it at Project Delivery and set it as a two-way connection, so each board shows the other. A mirror column on Project Delivery then shows each client's status from Client Master.

We expected the AIs to struggle with the two-way connection. By the time ours was done, neither had built anything, and the first thing to appear from either of them was a folder.

What Columns Do The Client & Project Boards Need?

On Client Master, the item name is the client, a People column holds the account manager (which assumes each one has a monday.com licence) and a Numbers column set to a currency holds the total contract value. SLA tier is a status column with Gold, Silver and Bronze.

The prompt didn't list the client status labels, so we used Onboarding as the default, plus Active and Inactive, and added Onboarded and At Risk once the rules needed them. Project Delivery has an Assignee People column, a Timeline column and a task status of To Do, Doing and Done.

We also added date created and date completed columns, then deleted them. We had misread the requirements and didn't need them.

How Do You Create A Project & Subitems When A Client Is Onboarded?

Use two automations, one on each board. Here's how we set them up:

1. On Client Master, create an automation: when Status changes to Onboarded, create an item in Project Delivery and connect it through the Connect boards column.
2. On Project Delivery, create an automation: when an item is created, create a subitem called Task 1, then add two more Create subitem actions for Task 2 and Task 3.
3. Test it by changing a client to Onboarded. A new project item should appear on Project Delivery with its three subitems.

As built, the subitems are created for any new item on Project Delivery, including tasks added by hand. One of the AI builds only created them for onboarded clients, which we probably should have done too, although the prompt didn't say either way.

Can A monday.com Automation Trigger When A Mirror Column Changes?

Not natively, as far as we could find. The second rule needed Project Delivery to notify a task's assignee when the mirrored client status changed to At Risk. We've built that trigger many times before, but it was no longer in the automation options.

None of the status change triggers offered the mirror column, and neither did a workflow. That leaves a marketplace app, the API or a third-party tool, so we moved on and came back to it later.

How Do You Count Business Days Between Two Dates In monday.com?

Let the Timeline column do the counting. We took the start and end dates in the prompt to mean a timeline, then set it up like this:

1. On the Timeline column, open the three dots, go to Settings and use Connect columns to add a Numbers column as its duration. We called it Days.
2. In the same three dots menu, go to Settings, then Customise, and untick include weekends. Days now fills in with business days only.
3. Add a Formula column and use its AI option to write the formula: if Days exceeds 14, show Long Term, otherwise show Standard.
4. Set a timeline of 15 days to check it shows Long Term.
5. For the colours, open the three dots, choose Conditional colouring, colour cells where the formula is equal to Long Term in red and save it as a new view.
6. Add a new condition for Standard in green, save it to this view and make it the pinned view.

Later we restricted column editing on the formula and Days columns, since Days comes straight off the timeline and nobody needs to change either by hand.

How Do You Hide A Column From Guests In monday.com?

Use Restrict column view. Guests on Project Delivery needed to see and update their tasks but never the total contract value, so we mirrored that value across and restricted the view of the mirror column from its three dots.

A guest could still click through to the connected client item and see the figure there, so we restricted the column view on Client Master too.

How Do You Chart Contract Value By Account Manager In monday.com?

With a chart widget on the Client Master board, where all the figures live. Here's how we set it up:

1. Add a dashboard at the top of the Client Master board, click Add widget and choose Chart.
2. Set the X axis to Account Manager and the Y axis to Total Contract Value.
3. To see each client's share, make it a stacked bar, stacked by the client name.
4. Use the filter at the top to show only clients whose status is Onboarded, press Apply and save the filters.
5. Add some test data to check the chart picks it up.

Can A Marketplace App Trigger On A Mirror Column?

Not in our test. We installed an automation app from the monday.com marketplace that offers a When mirror column changes trigger, but it wouldn't let us select the mirror column.

We tried the same trigger inside a workflow on Project Delivery and the mirror column still didn't show.

How Do You Invite Guests To A monday.com Board?

Change the board type to Shareable, then use Invite in the top right corner to add them as guests. We missed this and Claude didn't: its build had already made the board shareable.

Can monday.com AI Build A Mirror Column Automation?

It tried. We described the rule to Create an automation with AI and it chose the marketplace app's mirror column trigger, but the mirror column still wouldn't load. Taking the restriction off the contract value mirror column didn't fix it either.

Next we added a formula column that shows At Risk when the mirrored client status is At Risk. That works, but we couldn't find a working trigger for a formula column changing, and an AI step with a custom prompt wouldn't accept the formula column as an input.

How Do You Send A Notification When A Mirror Column Changes?

We used Zapier to watch the board and set a helper status, then let a normal monday.com automation send the notification:

1. In Zapier, create a new Zap with the monday.com trigger for when any column value changes, on the Project Delivery board. The trigger for a specific column didn't list the mirror columns.
2. Test it by setting a client's status to At Risk. The record that comes through includes the mirrored status as a lookup value.
3. Add a filter so the Zap only continues when that lookup value exactly matches At Risk.
4. Add a monday.com action that updates the item on Project Delivery, using the item ID from the trigger, and sets a new status column to a label (we used A). Test the step and publish.
5. In monday.com, create an automation: when that status changes to A, send a notification to the Assignee column.
6. Rename the helper status column (we called it Notification) and hide it.

That was the last requirement, and the whole build took us 41 minutes.

Can ChatGPT Or Claude Beat A monday.com Expert?

Not on this brief. Our build met every requirement in 41 minutes, with Zapier covering the one rule monday.com couldn't handle natively, and neither AI finished.

ChatGPT stopped when it asked for access to our web browser, which was a step too far for us. Claude hit its tool limit with work still to do, and we estimated it needed about another hour, using up credits the whole time.

Both needed watching along the way. One paused partway and had to be told to carry on, and Claude stopped to ask for permission more than once.

What Did The AI Builds Get Right & Wrong?

More than we expected in places. One built the Long Term and Standard formula with red and green conditional colouring just as we had (using separate start and end date columns rather than a timeline), and its dashboard wasn't far off. The AIs also managed the two-way connection we thought they would struggle with.

But the first build we checked had no At Risk notification, and both were messier than ours. One made whole boards private, where we had restricted only the column guests shouldn't see.

Can You Trust AI To Build Your monday.com System?

Not yet. Our test is whether we would trust what it built, and for both AI builds the answer was a categorical no.

AI can do a lot, but not as much as people think, and it really struggles with involved requirements like these. We expected that going in.

With our build, the next step on a real project would be sending it to the client and making whatever changes they need.