👋 HEY, IT'S RAJA

Busy week ahead. Apple's event is confirmed for Wednesday the 9th, Tim Cook hands over to John Ternus tomorrow, and there are new Macs you can already order. I will get to all of it.

But today's find is something you can actually install this morning, and it changed how I do a specific kind of tedious work.

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An extension that reads the page you are on and does the clicking for you.

Claude in Chrome went generally available on August 26 after a long limited pilot. It puts Claude in a side panel next to whatever tab you have open, where it can read the page, click links, type text, move between pages, and fill in forms, using the accounts you are already signed into.

The point is not summarising a page. You could already do that by pasting a URL into a chat box. The point is the boring multi-step stuff: a vendor portal with no export button, an internal dashboard, a form you have filled in forty times, a website that has never heard of an API. Claude works through it the way you would.

The change that came with general availability is autonomy. It now carries out multi-step tasks without stopping to ask permission after every individual action, with a safety classifier checking each action against what you actually asked for before it runs. You can turn that off and approve things one at a time, and for your first week I would.

Sessions now carry across desktop, web and mobile, so something you start in the side panel is waiting for you in the Claude app rather than stranded in a tab.

Three, and the first one is specific to us.

It is Chrome only. If you live in Safari, which is a reasonable place for an Apple person to live, this find is not for you yet. Worth knowing before you go looking.

It needs a paid plan. Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise. There is no free tier for this one, and Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month if you pay annually.

Prompt injection is a real problem, not a theoretical one. A browser agent reads web pages, and a web page can contain instructions written for the agent rather than for you. Hidden text on a page or in a form field can try to redirect Claude into doing something you never asked for. Anthropic has built defences and a safety classifier, and has been unusually open about the risk rather than quiet about it.

There is now a second option worth knowing about. As of August 27, Cowork in the Claude desktop app has its own built-in browser that opens in a side panel, completely separate from your Chrome profile and your logins.

The split is straightforward. Use the Chrome extension when the task needs your existing sessions, because you are already logged into that portal. Use Cowork's browser when it does not, because nothing it touches is connected to your accounts. For anything routine, the isolated one is the safer default and I reach for it first.

💻 Platform: Chrome, on Mac or anywhere else

📍 Where: Chrome Web Store → search Claude

💳 Requires: a paid Claude plan

🔄 Alternative: Cowork's built-in browser, in the Claude desktop app

Install it, keep approvals on for a week, and give it something dull.

See you Wednesday, where Apple wants $899 for a Mac mini and I am going to argue most of you should not pay it.

Keep it useful,

Raja · The Useful Tech

P.S. Enjoyed this? Forward it to a friend who loves their Apple gear a little too much.