Xcode Getting Claude AI Integration, Report Says
Marcus Mendes reports for 9to5 Mac this week Apple is readying Anthropic’s Claude AI system to natively integrate with Xcode. Mendes writes there are “multiple references” to Anthropic accounts found within Xcode 26 Beta 7, released to developers on Monday.
Specifically, there are mentions of Claude Sonnet 4.0 and Claude Opus 4 in Beta 7.
“This means that while ChatGPT remains the only model with first-party Xcode integration, the underlying support for Anthropic accounts is already in place, hinting that Claude integration could arrive sooner rather than later,” Mendes wrote on Monday. “To be clear, while developers have been able to plug in Claude via API, Apple seems to be moving toward giving Claude the same level of native Xcode integration as ChatGPT got during WWDC 2025.”
As Mendes notes, the Claude (and ChatGPT) integration is a manifestation of Craig Federighi’s comments during this year’s WWDC keynote. The Apple software chief said Apple was “expanding” its vision for Swift Assist. Announced at last year’s WWDC, Swift Assist is described by Mendes as “Apple’s answer to tools like GitHub Copilot: a built-in AI coding companion that would help developers explore frameworks, and write code.”
Crucially, Swift Assist never actually shipped after its announcement last year.
I’m not an app developer, but this Xcode-meets-AI news remains nonetheless fascinating from an accessibility perspective. I’ve long maintained the opinion that, at its best, artificial intelligence plays to computers’ greatest strength: automation. Why this is resonant from an accessibility angle is because, for developers with disabilities, that someone could plug into Claude—or ChatGPT, for that matter—and help them generate code snippets or ask about a particular API could very plausibly help make building software a more accessible endeavor. Take my own experience as a code spelunker, for example. It’s an anecdote I’ve shared before, but when I was building Curb Cuts, I used Google Gemini (as a web app-turned-Mac app) to help me with generating bits and bobs of CSS for the site’s backend. While I understand the fundamental elements of writing HTML and CSS, my practical skillset is decidedly at a novice level. More pointedly, I didn’t want to have to juggle a half-dozen tabs in Safari, all with Google searches on how to do certain things correctly. Thus, the allure of AI in this context is obvious: Claude (or whatever) can assist me by not only doing the research, but but by generating the necessary code. Not only is this automation convenient, it’s accessibility too because it saves me cognitive/motor/visual friction of finding answers, writing the code, etc. As I said earlier, using AI in this way is more than cool or convenient; it’s a de-facto accessibility feature. The argument for AI in Xcode is essentially the same for another Apple property in Shortcuts. Like Shortcuts, AI in Xcode takes what may well be multi-step tasks and consolidates them into a single step. Again, the big idea here is leveraging AI is playing to a computer’s greatest strength in automation. I wrote about Shortcuts and accessibility for MacStories.
(Cool postscript to that old story. It contains what’s perhaps the greatest single piece of copy I’ve ever written: “To paraphrase Kendrick Lamar, Shortcuts got accessibility in its DNA.” The sentiment is a reference to Shortcuts’ heritage; Workflow, which Apple acquired in 2017, won an Apple Design Award for accessibility two years prior at WWDC 2015. I interviewed the Workflow team about the app for TechCrunch a decade ago.)
Anyway, that Apple is reportedly preparing Xcode for Claude is yet another example of AI’s genuine good vis-a-vis accessibility. The nerds amongst us just think it’s cool because AI is the technology du jour, and it is, but accessibility matters a helluva lot too.
