Anthropic expands agent toolkit
Anthropic launched Claude Code Channels — letting developers message and control Claude over Telegram, Discord and similar platforms — and opened a Claude Marketplace that takes no commission from vendors, signaling an aggressive ecosystem push. They also shipped a Cowork feature with compliance caveats and have publicly denied claims about wartime manipulation, highlighting both product expansion and rising regulatory scrutiny. (venturebeat.com) (indiatoday.in) (whitebeardstrategies.com) (support.claude.com) (wired.com)
Claude Marketplace opened in a limited preview on March 6, 2026 with six launch partners named by Anthropic: Snowflake, GitLab, Harvey, Rogo, Replit and Lovable Labs. (siliconangle.com) Anthropic said purchases through the Marketplace “count against a portion of your existing Anthropic commitment” and the company will manage partner invoicing for customers. Anthropic also announced it is not taking a commission on Marketplace sales at launch, positioning the store as a zero‑fee channel to deepen enterprise spend with Claude. (launchberg.com) Claude Code Channels shipped as a research preview on March 20, 2026, enabling two‑way messaging from Telegram and Discord into active Claude Code sessions. (dev.to) Channels route events through Anthropic’s MCP servers and are built to surface progress and results back into the same messaging channel; the research preview requires Claude Code v2.1.80+ and a claude.ai login rather than API key authentication. (the-decoder.com) Anthropic’s Cowork update includes a Dispatch feature that lets mobile devices control a sandboxed desktop Cowork session and adds scheduled tasks and multi‑step automation in the desktop research preview; Dispatch availability has been reported as limited to Max subscribers during the preview. (support.claude.com) In court filings tied to Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Department of Defense, Head of Public Sector Thiyagu Ramasamy stated the company “has never had the ability to cause Claude to stop working, alter its functionality, shut off access, or otherwise influence or imperil military operations,” and the case is set for a hearing on March 24, 2026. (europesays.com) Anthropic is backing its ecosystem push with partner investments and programs, announcing roughly $100 million of partner network commitments and a certification effort to drive enterprise channel sales alongside the Marketplace rollout. (crn.com)
