Anthropic plugins accelerate the shift to AI agents

Anthropic has added plugin support to Cowork, its Claude-based workspace product, as investors debate whether agent-style AI tools will weaken demand for traditional seat-based software.

The plugin framework bundles skills, connectors, slash commands and sub-agents into packages that teams can share. Anthropic pitches it as a way to tailor Claude to specific roles, internal processes and data sources within an organisation.

Plugins sit inside Cowork's workflow. Users set a goal, and Claude produces work in the environment. Plugins provide instructions on how work should be done, which systems to draw on and which commands should be available to a team.

Role-specific bundles

Claude plugins can support a range of functions, with a particular focus on sales, legal and financial analysis. A sales plugin, for example, can connect Claude to a customer relationship management system and a knowledge base. It can also encode a sales process and expose commands for prospect research and follow-ups.

The model is designed to persist context. Once a team defines a plugin, Claude can draw on that context when it becomes relevant in later interactions. Anthropic argues that, as teams build and share plugins, Claude can work across functions while keeping outputs consistent with internal practices.

Because plugins are file-based, teams can build, edit and share them through standard developer workflows. Anthropic says this reduces the effort needed to maintain and distribute automation building blocks across a business.

Open-source set

Anthropic has published 11 internally built plugins covering productivity, enterprise search, creating or customising plugins, sales, finance, data work, legal, marketing, customer support, product management and biology research.

Within Cowork, users can install these plugins and upload their own. Anthropic also points developers to GitHub copies of the same components, and says organisations can start with the open-source set and adapt the files to match their tools, terminology and workflows.

Plugin support is available as a research preview for paid Claude users. Plugins are currently stored locally on a user's machine. Anthropic says broader sharing and management features are planned, including private plugin marketplaces.

Market reaction

The announcement caused the investors to reassess software valuations amid advances in generative AI, particularly tools that automate coding and knowledge work. The latest wave of selling has been broad across software names, with some investors arguing that AI agents could erode demand for established products.

In the United States, software-related names including Adobe, Salesforce, Intuit, ServiceNow, Autodesk, Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft and Oracle fell by double-digit percentages in a single session. Thomson Reuters, which owns the legal database Westlaw, fell more than 18% on Tuesday. The Nasdaq briefly dropped nearly 2% and closed down 1.5%.

European-listed information and software groups also fell. Relx dropped 14%, London Stock Exchange Group fell 13%, and Pearson declined 9.6%.

"We call it the 'SaaSpocalypse,' an apocalypse for software-as-a-service stocks," said Jeffrey Favuzza of Jefferies' equity trading desk.

Seats versus consumption

One driver of the repricing is a shift in how investors think about revenue models. Many software firms still rely on seat-based licensing, where growth tracks the number of employees at customer organisations. By contrast, AI services often charge based on usage and compute, with spending tied to how intensively customers run models and automated workflows.

Seat-based software has historically benefited from upsell as customers expanded headcount. Some investors argue that generative AI changes that equation by raising productivity and reducing hiring needs. That can lower the number of licences required and slow net retention rates, reducing the scope for the 20-30% growth rates that some listed SaaS companies once delivered.

At the same time, AI spending can rise even when headcount falls if organisations lean more heavily on automated agents and data processing. That has supported valuations for infrastructure and other consumption-based businesses in parts of the AI supply chain, while multiples for seat-based software have compressed.

Some analysts also describe the current selling as indiscriminate. In their view, markets are not distinguishing between tools that may be replaced by AI-driven workflows and systems of record that run essential processes. They compare it to mainframes, which remained central in many organisations even after cloud adoption broadened.

Industry commentary

Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho, wrote on X: "The stock market is becoming very negative about the prospects of SaaS companies in the AI-assisted code era. Well before the AI revolution, I have said SaaS industry is ripe for consolidation. An industry that spends vastly more on sales and marketing than on engineering and product development was always vulnerable. The venture capital bubble and then the stock market bubble funded a fundamentally flawed, unsustainable model for too long. AI is the pin that is popping this inflated balloon."

"Can Zoho survive the AI wave? It depends on our ability to adapt. I always ask our employees to calmly contemplate our death. When we accept that possibility, we become more fearless, and that is when we can calmly chart our course," he added.

Against that backdrop, vendors are experimenting with new ways to package automation around their products and workflows. Anthropic's plugin model for Cowork is the latest effort to fit agent-style AI into defined roles and corporate tooling, with private marketplaces and central management features expected in the weeks ahead.