Anthropic launched a new way to connect applications and tools to its AI Chatbot Claude, as well as an extended “Diver” feature that allows Claude to search for networks, enterprise accounts and more.

The new app connectivity feature is called Integrations and extends an in-depth research tool called Advanced Research, which offers subscribers in Anthropic's Claude Max, Team and Enterprise Plans, as well as Sonon Pro. In related news, Anthropic has also increased the rate limit for its AI-powered encoding tool, Claude Code.

Integration and advanced research are part of Anthropic's efforts to keep pace with competing chatbots like Google's Gemini and Openai's Chantgpt. It is reported that humans hope to reach $34.5 billion in revenue by 2027, and although this is definitely an offensive, there is still a long way to go. In early March, humans had an annual income of about $1.4 billion, a report said.

Integration is built on the company's MCP protocol, which allows AI models to draw data from sources such as business tools as well as content repositories and application development environments. Integrated click MCP enables developers to create and host application servers that enhance Claude functionality and allow users to discover and connect these servers to Claude.

“When you connect your tool to Claude, it gains a deep background about your work – knowledge of project history, task status, and organization and can take action on every surface,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post.

First, there are many integrations from partners including Atlassian, Zapier, Cloudflare, Intercom, Square and Paypal. Each expanded what Claude could do. For example, Atlassian integration allows Claude to aggregate and create pages in Atlassian's Confluence Workplace software, while Zappier integration allows Claude to connect to the former's application automation workflow.

As for other new Claude features launched today, it allows Claude to crawl "hundreds of" internal and external sources to deliver "more comprehensive" reports described by anthropology on topics in five to 45 minutes. Anthropic says advanced research can use Claude's newly extended connectors to search and when using the Claude Desktop application on MACOS or Windows - a local drive connected to MCP.

“With its new complex research ability, when you switch on the research button, Claude breaks down your request into smaller sections and studies each section in depth before compiling a comprehensive report,” continues the anthropomorphism in the blog post. “When Claude merges information from sources, it provides a clear reference directly to the original material.”

Many in-depth research tools have been introduced recently on chatbots such as Microsoft's Copilot and Xai's Grok. Driving them is “reasoning” AI models that have the ability to think through problems and fact checks themselves - skills may be important for delving into the subject.

Previously, Anthropic's research tool was one of the faster tools in the in-depth research category, and it took about a minute to compile reports. But the results are often shallow, partly because the research does not adopt inference models.