Hey {{First name|there}}! It’s Aaron.

You can export files. You can’t export habits.

That’s the quiet shift happening across AI tools this week — and it explains why some platforms are racing to sit inside your workflow instead of competing on features.

Anthropic just made it harder to leave Claude.

Not by making it smarter, but by embedding it inside Excel, Slack, Asana, Figma, and every other tool your team already can’t quit.

Anthropic isn’t competing on answer quality anymore. It’s competing on switching cost. This isn’t a convenience upgrade. It’s a positioning move.

Claude in Excel looks harmless on the surface. Ask questions about cells. Test scenarios. Fix errors. Get explanations with citations.

But the feature list isn’t the story.

The story is this: once Claude becomes the layer you think through your spreadsheet with, Excel stops being the sticky product. Claude becomes the sticky product.

You can export an .xlsx file. You can’t export the way your team learned to reason through models with Claude sitting beside every cell.

Microsoft won because organizations built muscle memory around Excel. Anthropic is aiming for the same outcome, just faster.

The bigger tell isn’t Excel. It’s apps living inside Claude.

All visible and editable without leaving the conversation.

Anthropic’s framing is “fewer tabs.”
The real effect is AI becomes the control layer.

This is the same playbook we’ve seen before. Microsoft made Office the layer everything ran on. Google made Workspace unavoidable. Salesforce embedded itself into revenue operations.

Once the workflow lives inside the platform, switching stops being a technical problem and becomes a psychological one.

You can migrate files. You can’t migrate habits.

This move makes sense only when you look at what Anthropic doesn’t have.

ChatGPT has search and distribution. Gemini has Google’s data. Anthropic has neither, so they’re building a workflow moat instead.

If Claude is embedded in how your team thinks, plans, models, drafts, and collaborates, it doesn’t need to win benchmarks. It just needs to be good enough and deeply entrenched.

That’s not an accident. That’s survival strategy.

Anthropic is careful to say “review changes” and “Claude can make mistakes.” That’s good hygiene. But it sidesteps the real risk creators should care about.

If you build your workflow around Claude:

This isn’t fear-mongering. It’s precedent.

We’ve seen this movie with Office, Google Workspace, Adobe, Salesforce. The product gets embedded first. The pricing power comes later.

This isn’t a “don’t use Claude” argument. It’s a use it intentionally argument.

Adopt, but keep AI interchangeable
Use Claude for acceleration, not for foundational logic. Avoid workflows that only make sense inside one AI.

Standardize outputs, not processes
If Claude helps you think, great. Make sure the artifacts remain tool-agnostic.

Delay deep integration unless switching is acceptable
If retraining your team would be expensive or disruptive, treat this as experimental, not default.

The question isn’t “Is Claude good?” It’s “How expensive will it be to leave?”

Claude isn’t trying to be the smartest AI anymore.
It’s trying to be the one you can’t quit.

Anthropic is betting that once AI becomes your thinking layer, switching tools feels less like changing software and more like rewiring how you work.

You can export spreadsheets.
You can’t export muscle memory.

The real decision for creators isn’t whether Claude is powerful. It’s whether you’re comfortable letting one AI company become the invisible infrastructure beneath your workflow.

That choice gets harder the longer you wait.

See you in the next one,

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