Published Date:
July 1, 2025

Build AI-powered apps with Claude AI (free)

Plus: AI formulas in Google Sheets, Stanford's AI tool to write research
By
Evelyn Le
Strategic Product Lead, Stay Ahead, FlexOS

Claude AI has become a no-code app builder

Anthropic has quietly taken a big step forward with Claude. What started as a tool for drafting and summarizing now includes the ability to build and run AI-powered apps right inside the Claude interface.

This update builds on the earlier Artifacts feature and adds a more interactive, technical layer. Instead of writing specs, waiting for prototypes, or pulling engineers off roadmap items, you can now prototype directly within your AI tool.

Whether it’s a new internal dashboard, a personalized learning experience, or a customer-facing assistant, the path from idea to live demo is becoming drastically shorter and increasingly in your own hands.

Here’s what’s new:

  • Build apps within Claude: Users can now create, host, and share interactive AI applications directly in Claude. There’s no separate dev environment, it all happens in the chat window.
  • You describe the idea, Claude writes the code: You tell Claude what you want to build, and it generates the code in response. You can then review, adjust, and see the result live. It’s a fast way to prototype without needing to set up tooling.
  • Build upon existing artifacts: You can browse the ​library​ and customize existing creations to fit your needs without starting from scratch.
  • Artifacts are now interactive: These outputs aren’t just static text. They’re functional apps that can interact with Claude through a built-in API. You can inspect the code, make changes, and share the result.
  • Examples from early users
  • Simple sharing and deployment: When you’re ready, you can share the app with a link, no deployment required. Claude handles the orchestration, prompt management, and basic error handling.
  • Technical flexibility: You can use Claude’s internal API to process inputs and coordinate logic, build rich UIs using React directly within the artifact, fork, customize, and share artifacts across users

Artifacts is available to users of all plans. As of the beta launch, there are some clear limitations: no external API calls yet, no persistent storage, and functionality is limited to Claude’s text-based completion API.

Still, it’s a notable shift. Claude is becoming more than a chat assistant, it’s starting to look like a lightweight, collaborative AI development environment.

Your AI Team: Gemini in Google Sheets, YouTube’s AI Overviews, Google’s “Ask Photo”

Every week, I report on the top updates to your favorite AI tools. This week:

Gemini can now generate structured data directly in Google Sheets

This might sound simple, but it’s a major step toward practical AI-assisted work, especially for teams that rely on spreadsheets for planning, reporting, or analysis.

Key updates:

  • AI in Cells: A new =AI() function allows you to prompt Gemini directly from a spreadsheet cell. You can ask it to generate text, summarize content, or classify entries, all tailored to your selected data range.
  • Text Generation, Summarization, Categorization: Gemini can write ad copy, customer summaries, internal emails, or group data (e.g., sentiment, request type) based on context. It supports referencing multiple columns and even custom instructions.
  • Context-Aware Output: The model understands cell structure and tone. For instance, it can write in a casual or formal style, or personalize content per customer.
  • Refreshable and Selective: Generated cells show when they’re out of sync with updated prompts or data, and you can refresh results with one click. Up to 200 =AI() functions can be processed at once.

By embedding natural language generation directly into cells, Google is moving Sheets closer to a dynamic workspace. Whether you’re building customer summaries, classifying feedback, or speeding up reporting, Gemini is quietly making spreadsheets much smarter.

Quick Hits from your favorite AI tools:

  • YouTube adds AI Overviews to video search. When searching on YouTube, users now see Gemini-powered summaries of video content, helping you find the right clip faster without watching the entire thing.
  • Ask Photos” is rolling out in Google Photos. Gemini is now integrated into Google Photos, letting you ask natural language questions like “When did we last go hiking with Sam?” or “Show me the best sunset shots.” It works across your library with contextual understanding.
  • Perplexity adds real-time financial data to Research and Labs. You can now access stock prices, trading volumes, and financial statements directly in your queries, no toggles or plugins required.
  • WhatsApp adds AI message summaries. Meta is testing a feature that uses AI to summarize long message threads in WhatsApp, offering a quick catch-up option when rejoining busy group chats.
  • Microsoft Copilot now helps you create videos from text. Using Clipchamp and Copilot together, you can turn a prompt like “Make a recap video of our sales kickoff” into a finished video with stock footage, music, and voiceover.
  • Microsoft Copilot gets extensibility boost. Admins can now manage agents directly from a new Copilot tab, while developers can build custom agents faster using built-in Office skills and deploy them in Teams and Copilot Chat.

Read more news at the end.

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Summer Break? Master AI While Others Slow Down

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Tutorial: Build a Data Visualization Generator with Claude Artifacts

In 5 Steps: Build a Data Visualization Generator with Claude Artifacts

Whether you’re leading a team, pitching to investors, or simply trying to make better decisions, clear, visual data helps you communicate faster and smarter. Spinning up a dashboard often means relying on dev time, complex tools, or wrangling spreadsheets manually.

This week, we’re showing you how to do just that using Claude’s Artifacts. In just five steps, you’ll create an app that turns CSV files into clean, filterable charts. It’s a simple way to explore how generative AI can turn an idea into a working tool.

New AI Tools to Try: Create.ad, Storm Stanford, MyLens.ai

Looking for something fresh to add to your creative or business toolkit? These three AI tools caught my attention this week:

Create.Ad: AI Tools for UGC Ads at Scale

Create.Ad uses AI to generate, script, and even voice-over video ads that look and feel like real user-generated content. You just need to drop the URL of your product, and ​Create.Ad​ will do the rest, and for free!

👉 Scale your ad creative with Create.Ad

STORM: AI-Powered Research Assistant from Stanford

STORM helps founders and thought leaders go from vague topic ideas to full-length, Wikipedia-style articles, complete with outlines, sources, and well-written content. Developed by Stanford, this free tool uses AI to brainstorm questions, gather trusted references, and write long-form pieces in your voice.

👉 Try structured research and writing with STORM

MyLens.ai: AI-Powered Visual Summarization

MyLens.ai turns any document, webpage, PDF, or YouTube video into interactive visuals, mindmaps, timelines, flowcharts, tables, quadrants, and charts. It’s perfect for professionals and students who want to understand complex content faster and present it more clearly.

👉Visualize your content with MyLens.ai

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Google DeepMind on robots, how young managers use AI, along with more crucial AI stories

Every day, Daan, Wendy, and I read all the AI news so that you don't have to.

Here are the must-read stories of the week:

Google DeepMind’s optimized AI model runs directly on robots

DeepMind is adapting its powerful Gemini AI to run directly on smartphones and power robots, hinting at a future of AI-native devices that think and act in real time.

Sam Altman comes out swinging at The New York Times

In a sharp rebuttal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman defends the company’s use of public data and questions traditional media’s framing of AI development.

How the Next Generation of Managers Is Using Gen AI

A new HBR study shows younger managers are reshaping workflows by using AI to plan, delegate, and communicate more efficiently, while reshaping expectations of leadership.

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See you next week,

Daan van Rossum - Lead with AI

Daan van Rossum​

Host, Lead with AI

Evelyn Le

Strategic Product Lead, Stay Ahead, FlexOS

Claude AI has become a no-code app builder

Anthropic has quietly taken a big step forward with Claude. What started as a tool for drafting and summarizing now includes the ability to build and run AI-powered apps right inside the Claude interface.

This update builds on the earlier Artifacts feature and adds a more interactive, technical layer. Instead of writing specs, waiting for prototypes, or pulling engineers off roadmap items, you can now prototype directly within your AI tool.

Whether it’s a new internal dashboard, a personalized learning experience, or a customer-facing assistant, the path from idea to live demo is becoming drastically shorter and increasingly in your own hands.

Here’s what’s new:

  • Build apps within Claude: Users can now create, host, and share interactive AI applications directly in Claude. There’s no separate dev environment, it all happens in the chat window.
  • You describe the idea, Claude writes the code: You tell Claude what you want to build, and it generates the code in response. You can then review, adjust, and see the result live. It’s a fast way to prototype without needing to set up tooling.
  • Build upon existing artifacts: You can browse the ​library​ and customize existing creations to fit your needs without starting from scratch.
  • Artifacts are now interactive: These outputs aren’t just static text. They’re functional apps that can interact with Claude through a built-in API. You can inspect the code, make changes, and share the result.
  • Examples from early users
  • Simple sharing and deployment: When you’re ready, you can share the app with a link, no deployment required. Claude handles the orchestration, prompt management, and basic error handling.
  • Technical flexibility: You can use Claude’s internal API to process inputs and coordinate logic, build rich UIs using React directly within the artifact, fork, customize, and share artifacts across users

Artifacts is available to users of all plans. As of the beta launch, there are some clear limitations: no external API calls yet, no persistent storage, and functionality is limited to Claude’s text-based completion API.

Still, it’s a notable shift. Claude is becoming more than a chat assistant, it’s starting to look like a lightweight, collaborative AI development environment.