Anthropic expands Claude with interactive apps for the workplace
Anthropic has announced a groundbreaking enhancement to its Claude chatbot: interactive apps that users can call up directly within the chat interface. The move is part of the company’s broader push toward enterprise-focused AI that not only responds with text but also integrates practical tools to boost workplace productivity.
What the new feature offers
The new Claude apps are designed to bring a suite of capabilities into a single conversational experience. Instead of switching to separate tools or dashboards, users can invoke interactive apps inside Claude to perform tasks, fetch information, or automate routine workflows. This design aims to reduce friction in daily operations by keeping action within the chat window where teams already collaborate.
Initial offerings emphasize common enterprise needs. Among the first apps are integrations with collaboration platforms, project management tools, and data services used across corporate teams. Slack, in particular, is highlighted as a core integration, enabling Claude to surface tasks, pull updates, or create items in response to natural language prompts during a chat thread.
How it works in practice
In practical terms, a user could ask Claude to “pull the latest Q1 sales numbers from the dashboard and summarize them in Slack,” and Claude would activate the relevant app, retrieve the data, and present a concise briefing within the chat. If updates are needed, the user can instruct Claude to refresh the data or push a summary to a channel. The experience is designed to feel like a seamless extension of the conversation rather than a handoff to a different system.
Security and governance are central to the rollout. Anthropic has emphasized controlling data access, with enterprise deployments designed to respect internal permissions, data retention policies, and audit trails. By keeping interactions within Claude and its integrated apps, the company aims to provide a centralized point for management and compliance oversight.
Focus on enterprise usability
The introduction of interactive Claude apps aligns with Anthropic’s strategy to target enterprise users who rely on consistent, explainable AI within their workflows. In business settings, employees often need quick answers, automated tasks, and reliable data processing—without navigating multiple tools or sacrificing data governance. Interactive apps within Claude offer a unified user experience that can be customized to reflect an organization’s particular tools and data sources.
Early adopters can expect a curated set of apps that target typical office scenarios: scheduling, calendar management, document generation, code snippets, and data analysis components. As developers expand the app catalog, Claude’s interactive capabilities could extend to niche domains, such as legal review assistants, procurement workflows, or customer support ticket triage, all accessible through natural language prompts.
Implications for productivity and collaboration
By embedding app-enabled actions inside the chat interface, Claude aims to reduce the cognitive load on knowledge workers. The ability to call apps from within the conversation can shorten task cycles, accelerate decision-making, and improve consistency in how data is retrieved and presented. When teams work in shared channels, Claude can surface answers and initiate actions without leaving the thread, enabling faster collaboration and more coherent information flows.
What this means for developers and IT teams
For developers, Claude’s interactive app framework opens new avenues to create specialized tools that tap into employer data sources, internal APIs, and third-party services. IT teams will likely appreciate the centralized security model, governance controls, and the ability to roll out capabilities in a manageable, scalable fashion. Organizations can start with a measured rollout—integrating a few trusted apps and expanding as teams validate use cases and compliance requirements.
Looking ahead
Anthropic’s move signals a broader industry trend: AI assistants moving from chat sprites to task-focused copilots that can execute actions inside familiar tools. As Claude’s catalog of interactive apps grows, the line between AI facilitator and automation engine will blur even further, enabling teams to work faster with less context switching. While early coverage emphasizes Slack and other workplace tools, the underlying architecture could accommodate a wider ecosystem of apps that extend Claude’s practical usefulness in everyday business operations.
