> Why would you build an app at all? Why wouldn't Claude just be the app itself?

Because then you don't have to keep spending tokens to use the app.

This is kind of like Alan Kay's idea in the 70s/80s for the Smalltalk image being the software that users customize to their needs instead of buying the software, except now it's a chatbot/agent interface instead of a customizable, integrated Smalltalk IDE.