Anthropic’s Claude AI has learned some new tricks – including how to use other applications and scour the web on your behalf. The company announced a major update that enables “Integrations” for Claude, essentially allowing the AI assistant to connect with popular apps and services.
In tandem, Anthropic has rolled out an Advanced Research mode that lets Claude perform extended web searches and data gathering, then return a comprehensive, cited report.
These features, reminiscent of OpenAI’s plug-ins and web browsing for ChatGPT, mark a significant expansion of Claude’s capabilities beyond just chat – moving it closer to a general AI agent that can act on the world’s information.
App Integrations via MCP: Last year, Anthropic and others proposed the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for connecting AI models to external tools and data. Initially, MCP was only usable through some local workarounds with Claude.
Now, Anthropic has built Integrations support directly into Claude, allowing it to work with remote MCP-compatible services out-of-the-box.
At launch, Claude offers one-click integration with 10 popular platforms: Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence (project tracking and documentation), Zapier (which itself connects to thousands of other apps), Cloudflare (potentially for some security or deployment automations), Intercom (customer chat logs), Asana (task management), Square (payments and commerce data), Sentry (error logging), PayPal, Linear (issue tracking), and Plaid (financial data).
This roster covers a wide range of business tools – from developer-centric ones to marketing and finance. Anthropic also mentioned upcoming integrations with Stripe, GitLab, Box, and more, and developers can create their own integrations fairly easily using documentation or even get help from Cloudflare’s built-in solutions.
What does this mean in practice? Users can now authorize Claude to access data from these apps and perform actions through them. For example, if your Claude is connected to Zapier, you unlock an enormous array of possibilities since Zapier can interface with Gmail, Slack, Trello, databases, etc.
You could tell Claude, “Gather the latest sales leads from our CRM, then create tasks in Asana and notify the team in Slack,” and Claude, via Zapier, could execute that multi-app workflow – all through a simple conversation.
Anthropic gave specific examples: using the Zapier Integration, Claude can “automatically pull sales data from HubSpot and prepare meeting briefs based on your calendar”.
With the Jira/Confluence integration, Claude could do things like summarize multiple Confluence pages or create new Jira tickets in bulk after a planning meeting. One particularly interesting use-case is with Intercom: Intercom’s own AI agent “Fin” can now work with Claude.
So Claude might analyze customer feedback from Intercom chats, then file bug reports in Linear (issue tracker) when users flag software issues – essentially linking your customer support directly to your engineering backlog via AI.
Anthropic emphasizes that each integration “drastically expands what Claude can do.” That’s not hyperbole: previously, Claude was limited to whatever information you pasted into the chat and its built-in knowledge. Now it can tap into live business data and perform operations.
It’s a move from AI-as-a-chatbot to AI-as-an-autonomous assistant operating within your digital ecosystem. By adopting an open standard like MCP, Anthropic also sidesteps the need to build each plugin themselves; instead, others can make their services MCP-compatible and Claude can then integrate with them.
This is similar to how OpenAI’s plugin system works, but MCP could theoretically be used by multiple AI models (not just Claude), hinting at a more interoperable future for AI assistants.
Advanced Web Research: The second pillar of this update is giving Claude some degree of internet access. When users enable Advanced Research mode, Claude can now search the web and connected sources for up to 45 minutes continuously.
Essentially, for complex questions, Claude will break the query into sub-questions, systematically find information (from the web or your integrated apps like Google Docs or Confluence), and then synthesize a detailed answer.
Anthropic says in most cases, Claude finishes in 5–15 minutes, but for very involved research it may take the full 45 minutes. During this time, Claude is operating somewhat like a human researcher: reading articles, scanning files, maybe crunching some numbers or comparing sources.
Once done, Claude delivers a comprehensive report complete with citations to each source it used. The citations are clickable and lead directly to the original material, so users can verify the information.
This transparent approach is intended to build trust – users see where Claude’s answers are coming from. It also guards against hallucinations: if Claude states a fact, it’s expected to back it up with a link, making it clear if something has no source.
This feature positions Claude as a competitor to tools like the new Bing (which can browse the web with GPT-4) or search engine-based chatbots. But Anthropic goes further by integrating user’s private data into the research.
For example, if you connect Claude to your Google Workspace, it can search through your Google Drive, emails, and docs (with your permission) for relevant info.
Imagine asking, “Claude, prepare a summary of our project status,” and Claude pulls from recent project docs on Confluence, relevant emails, Jira tickets, and web news about your industry, and compiles everything.
In essence, it acts like a diligent personal research analyst combing both internal and external sources. This was previously very cumbersome – one would have to manually feed chunks of data to an AI and do separate web searches. Now Claude can do it end-to-end.
Access and rollout: Initially, these Integrations and Advanced Research features were available in beta to users on Claude’s Max, Team, and Enterprise plans. Anthropic noted they’d expand it to Claude Pro users soon, which indeed happened by June 2025 (only a month later) when they announced Pro tier access.
Web search capability was actually turned on globally for all paid plans even earlier. To address security, Anthropic has provided documentation on how they handle data when connecting sources – presumably ensuring, for instance, that Claude doesn’t retain proprietary data beyond the user session unless directed.
Integrations require users to authenticate and often give limited scopes of access (e.g., maybe Claude can read but not delete data, depending on the connector).
Also, users choose which Integrations to enable; Claude isn’t just automatically rifling through everything. This opt-in model is important for enterprise acceptance.
Implications: By giving Claude the ability to act more like a human assistant that can “use a computer,” Anthropic is tackling a key challenge for AI adoption: usefulness. Many business users found chatbots intriguing but isolated – you’d still have to take their output and go do stuff (update a spreadsheet, send emails, etc.).
Now Claude can potentially do that stuff for you or at least significantly assist. For example, with the Square integration, a store owner could ask, “Claude, analyze our last month of sales and issue refunds to any customer who was double-charged.
” If Claude has access to Square data and perhaps email (via Zapier), it could find those cases and draft the refund transactions or emails automatically. We’re moving closer to agentic AI – AI that acts rather than just chats – which is powerful but also demands careful oversight.
There’s a competitive element too. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has a plugin ecosystem (though still somewhat limited in public beta), Microsoft’s Copilot offerings are deeply embedding AI into Office 365 and Windows, and startups like Inflection are touting personal AI agents.
Anthropic’s approach is a bit more open and developer-friendly (MCP is an open standard), which could attract enterprise developers to build on Claude as a platform. Anthropic is also likely leveraging its partnerships: note that Amazon (AWS) and Google Cloud can offer Claude with these integration features to their customers.
In fact, AWS’s Bedrock could allow Claude to interface with AWS services similarly (imagine Claude pulling data from an AWS S3 bucket or invoking a Lambda function – not announced yet, but plausible via MCP).
User experience: To use these features, a user would connect services under a new “Integrations” tab in Claude’s interface, and then, say, ask: “Claude, please compile a weekly report: check my Google Drive for the latest sales spreadsheet, summarize any big changes; also search the web for news on our top 3 competitors to include.
Then save the report to Confluence.” In theory, Claude would do all of that in one go. Early testers have reported impressive results, though sometimes the 5-15 minute wait can feel long – it’s essentially thinking time. But considering it might have saved you hours of manual research, it’s a worthwhile trade-off for many tasks.
As of this update, Anthropic has turned Claude from a smart chatbot into a versatile AI assistant that can reach out into the digital world. The company’s bet is that such capability will attract more business users who want AI not just to converse, but to actually get work done.
It also sets the stage for future Claude developments: perhaps one day you could say, “Claude, handle my inbox for me today” and it will read, draft replies, schedule meetings, etc. With Integrations and Advanced Research, Claude is much closer to that reality than ever before – a glimpse at what productivity might look like in the era of AI co-workers.