Claude in Chrome: AI in Your Browser

Claude in Chrome is a browser extension that lets Claude read, click, and navigate websites right alongside you. It works inside a side panel, lets it browse and see what you're doing, and gives Claude a new superpower. It's like giving it hands. It's available in beta on all paid plans, and it installs from the Chrome Web Store like any other browser extension. That's where we are right here: I searched for Claude in the Chrome Web Store and installed it into my browser plugins. You can also get links to it from Claude.com or from the Claude desktop application by clicking through to the Chrome extension. So I've installed the extension, and you can see it here. When I click it, it opens this side panel, and now we can open a page and have Claude do things along with us. We could say something like "summarize this page and give me bullet points on what's going on in the news," or ask it to help find something. But in this case, let's try to find a flight. I typed this out ahead of time so you don't have to watch me type: "Find me nonstop flights from San Antonio to Puerto Vallarta, leaving Friday morning, back Monday, under $500. Show me the two best options." It comes back and says it wants to use Google Flights, which I already have open. The plan: open Google Flights, set up a round trip search, set the departure dates, filter for nonstop, and identify the best two options. Okay, let's go. You'll notice down here I have it set to ask before acting. I could let it act without asking, but for now I want the confirmation step. My cursor is over on the right, but there's a second cursor clicking around inside the window. Claude has taken over the browser, typing, clicking, and manipulating the page. In a couple of minutes of juggling, it's doing the part I really don't like: jumping around, entering dates, entering information, and seeing what comes back. It's genuinely fun to watch it work. Based on the numbers I'm seeing on the board, I'm not sure we'll find something under $500, but it's chugging along. Let's see what we get. It's taking screenshots as it goes, reading the text on pages, clicking buttons, running searches, and gathering the research right in front of us. Oh, it is going to be under $500. Look at that. While it finishes, an honest observation: this is fun, but I'm not sure how time-saving it is for me. I probably could have searched and found this flight myself by now. But if I gave it a harder task, like searching all of eBay for a particular item, or if this were a recurring job, or if I set the task up and walked out the door to a meeting expecting it done when I got back, those are cases where this saves real time. In reality, though, this probably isn't the best way for me to use Claude. What we'll be doing in future episodes is bypassing this extension for almost everything and having Claude use this capability without us. Using Claude Cowork, the desktop application we've used in the past, we can have Claude interact with Chrome and run these kinds of searches in the background, without sitting here watching it slowly work the internet step by step. If you're running tasks in parallel, watching it live might be fine. If you're not, consider the hands-off approach. Other things you might have it do: navigating and organizing your inbox in webmail like Gmail, filling out forms, handling repetitive data entry (tell it "go put in everything you know about me" on a long form), and multi-step processes across multiple tabs, moving things from one tab into another. You can also record a workflow by performing the steps once and letting Claude learn to repeat them. Do it once, delegate forever. And you can connect the dots with other videos: paired with Cowork, this becomes a research layer for larger tasks. It lets Claude gather information, work with Excel workbooks, build decks, and format reports. It also lets Claude use tools it doesn't have direct access to, like web applications that are otherwise hard for AI to interact with. So it's done now. It searched, and it turns out there are no nonstop flights from San Antonio to Puerto Vallarta on this route. The nonstop filter is grayed out. The best two options: VivaAerobus for $491, an 8 hour 50 minute trip with a six-hour stop in Monterrey, which is the best value with a reasonable layover. The other option is a nearly 15-hour trip with an 11-hour stop in Mexico City, much cheaper. This is something I might iterate on. But as you can see, Claude can operate inside my browser autonomously, go do things, and bring back information. Next, we're going to turn this from a nice-to-have into a superpower.