The short answer
Anthropic ships Claude as embedded surfaces inside the tools you already use — a Chrome extension that browses with you, a spreadsheet agent for Excel, and integrations for Google Drive. The idea is that you don’t switch to Claude; Claude shows up where you already work.
Why this matters
The default model for AI assistants is “open another tab, paste your stuff in, paste the answer back.” That’s fine for occasional use. It’s terrible if you’re doing something AI-assisted ten times a day.
Embedded surfaces solve the friction. Claude inside Chrome means you don’t copy a webpage into Claude Chat — Claude reads the page you’re already on. Claude inside Excel means Claude can analyse the sheet you’re already in.
This is where AI is heading. The “paste it into a chat” pattern will look quaint in two years.
What’s available right now
A few currently-in-beta products from Anthropic, each in different states of polish.
Claude in Chrome. A browsing agent. You install the extension, give it a task, and Claude navigates web pages on your behalf — clicking, reading, filling forms. Useful for research workflows that span multiple sites. Currently a research preview; expect rough edges.
Claude in Excel. A spreadsheet agent. Claude can read your sheet, suggest formulas, write VBA, and run analyses. Useful when the analysis is more complex than what Excel’s built-in copilot handles. Beta.
Claude in Google Drive. Less of an “embedded surface” and more of a “your Drive is searchable from Claude Chat.” Connect your Drive to Claude, and any chat can reference files in it. This one’s been around longer and is stable.
Cowork. Different from the above — Cowork is Claude running on a schedule, not an embedded surface. We covered it in What is Cowork?.
What this means for the recipes on this site
A few of the recipes you’ll find here use these embedded surfaces directly:
- Recipes that browse the web on your behalf use Claude in Chrome
- Recipes that work with spreadsheets often use Claude in Excel
- Recipes that index your team’s documents use the Google Drive integration
Most recipes don’t require any of these. The free Claude Chat plus a Notion workspace covers most use cases.
A practical guideline
Don’t install everything on day one. Start with Claude Chat. Build a Project or two. Find the friction points in your workflow. Then install the embedded surface that solves the specific friction.
Installing five Claude integrations before you’ve used Claude meaningfully is the kind of thing that produces a screenshot for LinkedIn and zero actual value.
Last reviewed: 7 May 2026
Done with the basics? Try a recipe.
Browse Beginner recipes