Connect Your AI to Your Business Tools · Lesson 5 of 8
Lesson 5: Apps inside the chat
15 minutes. When a tool shows up with its own screen.
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So far, every connector has worked the same way. You ask, the AI fetches information, and it answers in text.
Some connectors now do more. Instead of describing your Asana project, the AI shows you the actual Asana board, right there in the conversation, and you can drag a task across it. Instead of telling you about a Canva design, it opens the design so you can change it. This is called an MCP App: a small, working piece of a tool's own interface, shown inside the chat.
- You can check the AI's work at a glance. A board or a chart is faster to sanity-check than a paragraph.
- You can fix things yourself. Wrong due date? Change it in the card. You don't have to explain the change to the AI in words.
- The AI sees what you did. When you click or edit inside the app, the assistant knows, and can carry on from there.
- Claude calls these interactive connectors. Look for the Interactive badge in the connector directory. Claude's help page lists eight: Amplitude, Asana, Box, Canva, Clay, Figma, Hex and Slack. They work on Claude web, desktop and mobile, on all plans, and they're on by default once the connector is enabled. They show up either as a small card in the conversation or in a full-screen view.
- ChatGPT has had apps with their own screens since October 2025. Early examples included Booking.com, Canva, Expedia, Figma, Spotify and Zillow. They live in the same plugin directory as the rest.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot can show MCP apps through custom agents. Microsoft's documentation shows these are built by a developer with Microsoft's agent tools and then allowed by your admin. So on Copilot, this is something to ask your IT partner about, not something you switch on yourself.
The same standard runs in all three. A company builds its app once and it works in each of them.
An app inside the chat is still a connector. Everything from Lesson 2 applies:
- It uses your login and your permissions.
- Anything it wants to *do* (not just show) goes through the same approval prompt.
- Each app runs walled off inside the conversation, in what's called a sandbox (a sealed box that can't reach the rest of your computer or your other tabs).
- Claude's help page notes that purchases through these third-party connectors aren't supported.
A useful rule from the Insider article *MCP Apps, Explained*: treat a connected app like a new employee with keys. Connect only the ones you'd hand a login to, and read the prompt before you click Allow.
Pick one tool your business already uses that has an interactive version. Canva, Asana and Slack are the most common in small offices.
- Connect it the same way as in Lesson 4 (in Claude, look for the Interactive badge).
- Ask for something visual:
- Canva: "Make a simple social post announcing our holiday hours: closed Thursday and Friday, back Monday."
- Asana: "Show me my overdue tasks."
- Slack: "Draft a message to the #general channel about Friday's early close. Let me review it before it's sent."
- When the app appears, change one thing yourself inside it. Move a task, edit a word, pick a different color.
- Then ask the AI a follow-up about what you just changed: "What did I just change?" or "Now make a matching version for email."
- The tool's own interface showed up in the conversation, not just a text description.
- You made a change inside it, and the AI's next answer reflected your change.
- If the app tried to post, send or publish anything, you saw an approval prompt first.
If you only get text, check that the connector is on for this conversation, and that you're on web, desktop or mobile (some coding tools show text only).
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Next: the safety lesson. The one you'll come back to.
→ Lesson 6: Stay safe
Previous: Lesson 4: Connect a business app and run three real tasks · Next: Lesson 6: Stay safe: approvals, read-only, and the off switch