You have probably sent a spreadsheet to a colleague and watched their eyes glaze over. Anthropic just gave Claude two ways to fix that: dashboards that show their working, and animated explainers you can edit like a document. Creator Paul Lipsky has already put both through their paces on video, and what he shows is worth ten minutes of your time.
On October 8, 2026, Anthropic put Claude Dashboards and Claude Motion into beta. Both live inside Artifacts, the same place your Claude docs, decks and designs already sit.
I watched Paul’s walkthrough, read Anthropic’s announcement and checked the help pages. Here is what the tools do, how to run your first one, and what you should know before you spend a Monday morning on them.
Watch This First
Paul J Lipsky’s video is called The New Claude Motion Is Awesome. His description covers animated charts, point and click edits, concept explainers, style matching, voiceover sync and interactive dashboards. I have broken each of those into steps below.
Prefer to open it on YouTube? Here is the video on Paul’s channel.
What Anthropic Actually Shipped
Here is the thing most coverage skips. These are two separate tools with two separate audiences, and they are not available on the same plans.
| Tool | What it does | Who gets it (beta) |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Dashboards | You ask a question in plain language. Claude writes a SQL query for each chart, runs it on your connected data, and shows you the query and the last refresh time. | Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise |
| Claude Motion | Claude writes code that animates your text, charts, shapes and images into a short video you can edit and export as MP4. | Team and Enterprise only |
Dashboards connects to a data warehouse such as BigQuery, Databricks, Snowflake, Redshift or ClickHouse, or to an app you have already connected to Claude, like Salesforce, according to the official announcement. When a question needs deeper analysis, you can send the dashboard on to tools like Amplitude, Grafana, Hex, Mixpanel, Omni, PostHog or Sigma.
Motion does not use a video generation model. There is no generated footage and no AI people. Because every animation is code, you can change one word, number or timing and the rest stays put. That single design choice is why it feels more like editing a slide than rolling the dice on a video generator.
On Enterprise plans, both tools are off until an owner switches them on under Organization settings, then Artifacts. Team plans have Motion on by default.
What Paul Shows, and How to Copy It
These are the six uses from his video description. Where Anthropic’s own help pages back a point, I say so. Where they do not, I flag it in the limitations section.
- Animate your data. Paste a spreadsheet’s numbers into the prompt and ask for a motion chart. Paul adds sound to his.
- Edit by pointing. Use the comment tool and inline text edits to tweak a scene without rebuilding the whole animation.
- Explain a concept. One prompt can produce an animated workflow, like how AI agents work.
- Copy a look. Feed Claude a screenshot of a style or brand you like and ask it to match.
- Sync to your voice. Pair an SRT transcript with your video intro so the animation lands on your spoken words.
- Build a dashboard. Turn spreadsheet or app data into a dashboard with motion graphs embedded.
How to Make Your First Motion Animation
Pick something you already explain badly in slides. A quarterly number, a three step process, a pricing comparison. Real material tells you in ten minutes whether this is worth your time.
- Check your plan. Motion is for Team and Enterprise. If you are on Pro or Max, you will not see it yet. Skip to the dashboard steps below.
- Start the request. Type
/motionin the Claude message box, or choose Output and then Motion. You can also open the Artifacts tab and pick a Motion template. - Write a prompt with four parts. Say who will watch it, where it will play, how long it should run, and what material to use. Attach the report, data or images. Copy this and swap in your details: Turn the attached quarterly numbers into a 30 second explainer for our all hands. Audience: people outside finance. Lead with the one number that matters most, then show the trend. Match the colors in the screenshot I attached. Tell me what you assumed.
- Watch it once, then list the fixes. Do not fix as you watch. Note everything that is off, then ask for all of it in one message.
- Edit the small stuff yourself. Change a word or number in the editor, or tell Claude something like slow down the second scene. Anthropic says you can do either.
- Export or share. Click Export and choose MP4. Animations start private, so click Share when you are ready.
How to Build a Dashboard You Can Trust
- Connect your data first. Link your warehouse or the app you want to ask about. Anthropic has a guide on getting started with Claude Dashboards.
- Ask a question, not a chart. How do this month’s signups by channel compare with last month’s gets you further than a signups chart. Name the table or app if you know it.
- Click a number and read the query. This is the step that makes the tool useful. If the query is not counting what you meant, tell Claude what to change.
- Refine in plain words. Add a filter for region. Switch to a weekly view. Each change is one message.
- Share only after you have checked it. Dashboards start private. Anthropic’s own line is that Claude makes the first version and you decide what gets shared.
Once the dashboard is right, ask Claude to animate it. Anthropic’s launch example does exactly this with a bike share dashboard, and Paul’s video shows the same idea with motion graphs inside a dashboard.
Two More Prompts Worth Stealing
For a concept explainer:
Make a 45 second animated walkthrough of how an AI agent completes a task: goal, plan, tool use, check, result. For beginners. Short on text, clear on motion. Tell me what you assumed.
For a dashboard you can question:
Build a dashboard of open opportunities by stage and owner from my Salesforce data. Add a note under each chart saying exactly what it counts and what it leaves out.
That last line, asking Claude to say what each chart leaves out, catches more wrong numbers than any other habit I know.
Honest Limitations
- Motion is not for everyone yet. It needs a Team or Enterprise plan. If you are a solo creator on Pro, Paul’s best demos are out of reach for now.
- Both are beta. Expect rough edges. Anthropic gives no date for general availability.
- Some video features are not in Anthropic’s docs. The help pages cover text, charts, shapes and images. They do not mention sound, SRT sync, screenshot style matching or spreadsheet uploads for dashboards. Paul shows them, but check on your own plan before you promise a client any of it.
- Dashboards need clean data. Claude writes the SQL, but a chart is only as good as the query and the business definitions behind it. Read the query before you present the number.
- Dashboards are for quick questions. Anthropic says so itself. When the question gets serious, send it to your BI tool.
- It counts against your limits. Longer or more complex animations use more of your plan’s usage than a typical message.
- Sharing needs your admin. Sharing outside your organization, or by link, only works if your admin allows it.
Your Move
Take one chart that never lands in meetings. Run the Motion prompt above if your plan has it, or the dashboard steps if it does not. Time yourself.
Then do it twice more on real work before you judge. The first run teaches you how to prompt. By the third, you will know which reports are worth animating and which are fine as a table.
One more thing. If you design in the old standalone Claude Design site, it closes on December 14. I covered the move in my post on Claude Docs, Slides and Design inside chat.
Know someone who still sends a raw spreadsheet and hopes for the best? Share this post with them, and tell me in the comments which chart you would animate first.
Sources
- Claude: Build live dashboards and animate explainers with Claude (October 8, 2026)
- Claude Help Center: Get started with Claude Motion
- Claude Help Center: Get started with Claude Dashboards
- YouTube: The New Claude Motion Is Awesome, by Paul J Lipsky
- TestingCatalog: Claude launches Dashboards and Motion in beta
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