According to VentureBeat, Anthropic announced on Monday that users can now open and interact with popular business apps directly inside its Claude AI assistant. The immediate rollout includes integrations with Amplitude, Asana, Box, Canva, Clay, Figma, Hex, Monday.com, and Slack, with Salesforce support coming soon. The feature, called MCP Apps, is an extension of the open-source Model Context Protocol and is available at no extra cost to users on any paid Claude plan—Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise. This launch follows CEO Dario Amodei’s controversial predictions at Davos last week that AI could replace 50% of white-collar jobs within five years. The move comes as Claude’s web audience has more than doubled since December 2024, and the company is reportedly planning a massive $10 billion funding round.
The Workflow Power Play
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just about adding a few new tricks. It’s a strategic land grab for the center of your workday. For years, the promise of AI has been hampered by a simple friction—you get a great answer in the chat, but then you have to copy, paste, and execute the action in another tab. Anthropic is basically trying to delete that step entirely. Now you can build a project timeline in Asana, draft a message in Slack, or create a chart in Figma‘s FigJam without ever switching contexts.
And by making it free for existing paid users, they’re going for maximum adoption velocity. They’re not nickel-and-diming for integrations or charging partners for placement. The goal is clear: get Claude embedded so deeply into daily workflows that replacing it becomes a monumental pain for any company. It’s the old enterprise software playbook—become the system of record, or in this case, the system of action. Once your projects start in Claude and your messages get drafted there, where else are you going to go?
The Open-Source Ecosystem Gambit
Now, the really clever part is how they’re using open source to fuel what is, let’s be honest, a proprietary advantage. MCP (the Model Context Protocol) is open. Anyone can build an MCP server to connect their tool to any AI that supports the protocol. But guess who the biggest, most prominent MCP client is right now? That’s right, Claude.
So Anthropic gets to champion an open standard while simultaneously benefiting from every new integration that gets built for it. They’re fostering an ecosystem that funnels value directly to their flagship product. It’s a smart way to build network effects without looking like you’re building a walled garden. But let’s not kid ourselves—the primary beneficiary is Claude’s position in the market.
Safety and Scrutiny in an Agentic World
But when your AI can send a Slack message or publish a Canva design on your behalf, things get real—and risky—fast. The consent-prompt model Anthropic describes is a sensible middle ground for now. You get a “Claude wants to post this, you good?” check before anything fires off. But it puts a huge onus on the user to pay attention every single time. How many times do you blindly click “OK” on a software dialog box?
Anthropic admits agent safety is “an active area of development,” and they’ve already had to add safeguards in Claude Code after users accidentally deleted files. As these actions become more complex and consequential, this is going to be a major flashpoint. Can an enterprise truly trust an AI agent with access to all its core tools? The security reviews are going to be intense.
The Race for the AI OS
So where does this leave the competition? This is a direct shot across the bow of OpenAI and others vying for business customers. Anthropic is betting that seamless, actionable integration will beat raw model prowess on a benchmark. It’s a bet on utility over pure intelligence.
But the gaps are obvious. No Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace integration is a massive hole for most corporations. Those suites are the workflow for millions. Until Claude can natively manipulate a Google Doc or an Excel spreadsheet, its command center ambitions are incomplete. The announcement feels like a powerful first salvo in a much longer war to become the operating system for AI-powered work. The battlefield is no longer the lab; it’s your messy, complicated, app-filled browser tabs. And Anthropic just showed up with an army of connectors.
