Anthropic tiptoes into MS Office territory with new Claude artifacts

Anthropic has introduced three new artifact types for Claude, namely Sheets, Whiteboards and Data, and promised that Claude Meetings will arrive soon. The move takes Anthropic deeper into office productivity, a market long dominated by Microsoft and Google. The additions join Docs, Slides, Design and Motion, forming what the company presents as a growing Claude-dependent productivity suite. Users interact with these artifacts through Claude rather than treating them as standalone files.

New artifact types join Claude

Anthropic announced Claude Sheets, Claude Whiteboards and Claude Data on Tuesday. These artifact types join existing ones, Docs, Slides, Design and Motion. The company describes an artifact as anything Claude makes that a user would put in front of someone, such as a design, deck, document, dashboard or small interactive tool.

Artifacts differ from files

An artifact is not meant to be stored and transferred independently. Users interact with it through Claude, and it opens via a sharing URL. Artifacts can contain content types including .txt, .md, .html, .jsx, .svg, .pptx, .docx, .zip, .pdf and .mp4, among others.

Apps move into Claude

Anthropic has also expanded interactive connectors. Partners can embed apps directly in Claude, so users can work in Adobe and Atlassian without switching tabs. Plugins from Salesforce (beta), NetSuite and Workday (beta) include built-in skills for sales preparation, financial data analysis and HR tasks such as time off and expenses.

Non-technical users and business case

The company says non-technical teams are starting to get as much from Claude as engineers, and cites testimonials from Accenture and Datadog. It also notes that computation and mathematics account for a larger share of Claude usage than any other occupational category, according to its own data. Anthropic suggests that showing an untapped market of non-coders who would welcome a Claude subscription would please investors in its pending IPO.

Sources: The Register