Claude gets interactive with MCP extension

Anthropic’s Claude got a bit livelier today thanks to a new extension to MCP, the open-source protocol that allows AI agents to easily access tools and data across the internet. Users will now be able to interact with apps directly inside the Claude chatbot, letting you draft and format Slack messages to colleagues and create presentations for clients in Canva without having to switch tabs.

As of today, Anthropic said tools like Asana, Figma, Slack, and Canva will “open as interactive apps right inside of chat.” While users could previously connect tools like Slack and Asana to the AI assistant, doing so meant getting text back. The company says the new in-app integration means users can actually engage with the tool and “see, explore, and refine results visually, not just read about them.”

A number of popular tools are already available to use directly in Claude. Anthropic says users can customize Canva decks in real time, format and preview Slack messages, build interactive charts with Hex or Amplitude, and manage projects with Asana or monday.com. There are also integrations for Figma, Clay, and Box, Anthropic said, with Salesforce tools like Data 360, Agentforce, and Customer 360 apps “coming soon.”

The interactivity — something of apps-within-an-app — sounds similar to the “mini” apps embedded inside messaging platforms like Telegram and Discord. The integration signals a shift in how AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude are likely to operate in the future, becoming more like operating systems than individual tools, an “everything app” in the vein of Tencent’s WeChat in China. ChatGPT has already made a step in that direction with the launch of its own app ecosystem last year.

Anthropic credited the Model Context Protocol, or MCP, for the ability to integrate apps into Claude. The extension, called MCP Apps, “lets any MCP server deliver an interactive interface within any supporting AI product — not just Claude,” meaning other interactive app interfaces could soon be on the way to other AI tools.

Operating standards like MCP are crucial for building usable ecosystems of products as they avoid the need for companies to develop and maintain numerous different interfaces. MCP began life at Anthropic in 2024 but has been widely adopted by companies including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. Anthropic donated it to the Linux foundation late last year and established a new fund — the Agentic AI Foundation — with other tech giants like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Block, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare, to “advance open-source agentic AI.”