🌟Vasilij’s note
This week reinforced a pattern I keep testing for: every tool marketed as "just five minutes to connect" quietly moves the audit trail somewhere nobody can see it. Clay shipped Ads and Workflows this week, pushing further into always-on GTM orchestration – while its own MCP connector inside Claude does the opposite, a one-minute setup that hands back genuine enrichment data with zero export and zero visibility into what's left on the credit meter. Snyk's latest numbers, also out this week, put a figure on the wider problem: agent adoption at surveyed firms climbed to 33%, but security teams can only see about a third of what's actually running. Anthropic's own answer – Enterprise-Managed Authorization, one login instead of a consent prompt per connector – fixes the friction, not the visibility gap underneath it. Convenient and governed are still two different projects. This week's Maker Note and Deep Dive test exactly where that line sits.
In today's edition
This week in agents | What changed
Anthropic's annualised revenue run rate hit $65bn by the end of July
Roughly seven times last year's figure – as the company lines up a possible IPO. The vendor most of you have built workflows on is scaling for a public listing, not standing still; expect pricing tiers, support levels and connector policy to keep shifting under you over the next year.
Claude.ai, Claude Code and Claude Cowork all went down together for roughly 40 minutes on 16 August
With authentication and platform performance both affected before Anthropic confirmed a full restore. If one outage can simultaneously stop your proposal drafting, delivery reporting and client comms, you need a documented manual fallback before it happens on a day that matters.
Snyk's newest data shows agent adoption among surveyed firms climbing from 28% to 33%, while security visibility covers only about a third of what's actually running.
Two in three agents at the average company are invisible to whoever is supposed to be governing them – this is this week's Deep Dive playing out at industry scale.
Top moves | Signal → impact
Clay shipped Ads and Workflows on 11 August
Extending its enrichment engine into always-on GTM orchestration rather than one-off list building. → The more Clay automates inside its own governed platform, the more it matters which parts of that same data you let touch a five-minute chat connector instead – see this week's Deep Dive.
MCP's Enterprise-Managed Authorization extension went stable this month
With Anthropic, Microsoft and Okta adopting it so users log in once instead of approving every connector separately. → Fewer consent prompts speeds adoption, but a single sign-on makes it easier, not harder, for a connector to become someone's default. Tighten your approval list before switching this on.
Microsoft is merging app and agent approval into one view across the Teams, Microsoft 365 and Copilot admin centres
With the rollout starting in late August and running into mid-September. → If you're on Microsoft 365, confirm your existing allow/block list survives the migration rather than resetting to default-on.
Maker note | What I built this week
This week I ran Clay's new MCP connector inside Claude on three real pieces of pre-call research: a specific contact lookup, a multi-company search for COOs across three firms in one prompt, and a full company deep-dive with tech stack and recent news layered on top.
Decision: genuinely faster than opening Clay's table for one-off, pre-call research – but I'm not letting it near anything that needs a record. Closing the chat deletes the list, and I can't see the remaining credit balance from inside Claude.
Upskilling spotlight | Learn this week
MCP Enterprise-Managed Authorization docs
Understand how one-login connector auth changes your admin approval flow before you switch it on for the team.
Clay's Workflows launch post
See exactly where Clay's own orchestration stops and a connector-only lookup starts, so you know which one you're actually buying.
Operator’s picks | Tools to try
Clay (via the Claude connector)
Use for: pre-call contact and company lookups, 1–20 contacts, nothing that needs to persist.
Standout: genuine waterfall-enriched data in under a minute, no new tool to learn.
Apollo.io
Use for: teams that want enrichment plus a persistent, CRM-synced database instead of a one-conversation lookup.
Caveat: its own database is narrower than Clay's 100+ source waterfall.
Composio
Use for: standing up governed, org-wide MCP connectors instead of letting individuals add their own.
Caveat: someone technical still needs to configure and toggle on any workflow before it's callable.
Deep dive | Thesis & Playbook
Clay's own connector inside Claude is a clean example of a wider shift – consumer-grade AI platforms turning into point-and-click MCP connectors instead of tools a firm consciously buys and rolls out. With Clay pushing deeper into orchestration this week and Snyk quantifying the visibility gap this creates industry-wide, it's worth knowing precisely what the chat connector does and doesn't do before someone on the team treats it as "Clay, but easier."
On paper
One-click connect from Claude's Customise > Connectors menu, authorised through Clay's own login, live in under a minute
A free Clay account comes with 500 starter credits – no separate subscription required to begin
Handles single-contact lookups, multi-company decision-maker searches, and company research (tech stack, headcount, funding, competitors) from one plain-language prompt
Filters by title, seniority, location and time in role, plus custom one-off research questions (delivery model, B2B vs B2C)
Clay itself positions this explicitly as a quick-lookup tool – 1 to 20 contacts – not a replacement for the full platform
In practice
Nothing persists once the chat closes: no table, no saved view, no export button. Copy what you need or lose it
No scheduling, no CRM push, no conditional logic ("if VP, then enrich") – all of that stays in Clay proper
Credits burn at the same rate as inside Clay directly, but the running total isn't visible from inside Claude – reps get hard-blocked once they hit their limit with no warning
Clay Functions (pre-built workflows an ops team configures) don't appear unless someone has already built and toggled them on for MCP – most workspaces will see none
Enterprise plans need an admin to add the connector first; Pro and Teams users can self-serve – two different governance postures living side by side in the same firm
Issues/backlash
Same shape as Snyk's shadow AI number this week: real access to prospect and company data, added by one person in under a minute, with no log an ops lead would ever see
Clay's pricing overhaul earlier this month – CRM sync and API access dropping from the $800 Pro tier to the $495 Growth tier – makes the fully governed platform more attainable just as the ungoverned lookup version gets easier to reach for instead
MCP's Enterprise-Managed Authorization fixes login friction but not this: one sign-on across connectors doesn't create an audit trail for what each one actually returned
My take (what to do)
Startup (15–40 staff): Fine for one partner to use for pre-call research on deals that don't yet justify a full Clay seat. Skip it entirely for anything client-facing or repeatable – if you're re-running the same enrichment weekly, that's the signal to build it properly in Clay's table, not keep re-asking Claude.
SMB (50–120 staff): This is exactly the kind of tool that turns into shadow AI without anyone deciding it should. Name one person who owns the connector list, require a one-line note in the CRM whenever prospect data comes from a chat lookup, and set per-person credit budgets before rollout – Clay's hard-block at the limit is your only visibility if you don't.
Enterprise (150–250 staff): Route this through the admin-gated path even though self-serve is available on lower tiers – if partners are adding connectors individually, you already have the visibility gap Snyk is describing. Pair it with MCP's Enterprise-Managed Authorization once your identity provider supports it, and treat "no export, no audit trail" as a hard no for anything touching regulated client data.
How to try (15-minute path)
Connect the Clay connector in Claude (Customise > Connectors > search "Clay" > Connect), then run one real pre-call lookup on a contact you're meeting this week. (5 min)
Ask Claude to enrich that same contact with a verified email and one custom research question specific to your pitch, then copy the output into your CRM manually – don't rely on it staying anywhere. (5 min)
Success metric: you can state, in one sentence, where that data lives now and who else can see it. If the honest answer is "nowhere but this chat," decide before your next call whether that's acceptable for this particular deal. (5 min)
"A five-minute connector and a governed platform solve different problems. Treat them as the same tool and you'll only notice the difference after something goes wrong."
Spotlight tool | Apollo.io
Purpose: A contact and company database with its own first-party data, positioned as Clay's closest alternative for teams wanting persistent, CRM-native enrichment rather than a chat-based lookup.
Edge: Flat, single-source pricing with no credit waterfall – a direct answer to the visibility gap Clay's connector leaves open.
→ Native CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce)
→ Flat per-seat pricing from $49/month
→ Built-in sequencing, so enrichment and outreach share one audit trail
Try it: Apollo.io
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