Claude can now disgorge interface elements from other apps
An official Model Context Protocol extension
Anthropic's Claude can now present the interfaces of other applications within its chat window, thanks to an extension of the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Claude has long been able to fetch data from third-party applications through an MCP server connection. That capability has been expanded to present user interface elements like charts, forms, and dashboards, allowing third-party apps to be operated from within the chat window.
"Claude already connects to your tools and takes actions on your behalf," the company said in a blog post. "Now those tools show up right in the conversation, so you can see what's happening and collaborate in real time."
The change makes Claude's chat environment more like a cross-application interface layer – users no longer have to switch application focus to access app-specific tools. It could pose a challenge to operating system makers like Apple, Google, and Microsoft, similar to the one presented by web browsers – it reduces the need to interact with the operating system.
And it's not just Claude that stands to benefit. The extension, called MCP Apps, should be available in other vendors' AI applications, including Goose, Visual Studio Code, and ChatGPT, either today or soon.
The MCP Apps Extension (SEP-1865) was first proposed back in November 2025 and is based on MCP-UI and the OpenAI Apps SDK. It allows MCP servers to deliver interactive user interface elements that hosts can render in-conversation, rather than returning data alone.
"MCP Apps address a real gap between what agentic tools can provide and how users naturally want to interact with them," said Clare Liguori, senior principal engineer at AWS, in remarks accompanying the MCP blog post. "The ability to render dynamic interfaces directly in conversation makes it easier to leverage MCP server capabilities in practical ways."
Initially, this ability to be proxied within Claude is limited to Anthropic's launch partners: Amplitude, Asana, Box, Canva, Clay, Figma, Hex, monday.com, Slack, and (soon) Salesforce. But expect that to expand over time as other software makers adapt their apps.
MCP Apps surface third-party interface elements in iframes, but with additional capabilities like logging events for debugging, opening links in the user's browser, sending follow-up messages, and updating the underlying model's context.
"Running UI from MCP servers means running code you didn't write within your MCP host," the MCP post explains, citing various security layers like iframe sandboxing, pre-declared templates for prevailing HTML content prior to rendering, auditable messages, and host-managed approvals for UI-initiated tool calls.
Whether those defenses prove sufficient to avoid creating novel risks will be tested in time. ®