Show, Don't Tell
When Claude makes a change in InDesign, it verifies its work. It takes a snapshot, checks that the text frame landed where it asked, confirms the image is cropped correctly. This verification happens constantly—every nudge, every placement, every adjustment.
Those snapshots live in the tool accordion. They’re useful for Claude. They’re invisible to you unless you dig.
Now there’s a difference between checking and showing.
The accordion problem
Claude’s validation loop generates a lot of snapshots. Each one ends up collapsed under a tool call: “snapshot → Result.” You can expand it, squint at the image, collapse it, move on. Most of the time you don’t bother—you trust that Claude checked.
But sometimes you asked to see something. “Show me page 3.” “Let me see how that looks.” And the result lands in the same accordion, requiring the same click-to-expand ritual.
Inline presentation
Claude can now present snapshots directly in the conversation. When you ask to see a result—or when Claude finishes something worth showing—the image appears inline, right in the chat. No accordion. No extra clicks.
The verification snapshots stay where they belong: collapsed, out of the way, doing their job without cluttering your conversation. Only the snapshots meant for you appear inline.
The viewer
When a snapshot appears inline, it comes with controls:
- Fit: see the whole page or spread at a glance
- Zoom (+/−): lean in for detail
- 1:1: pixel-perfect view at actual size
- Drag to pan: navigate when zoomed in
It’s the same image Claude sees, rendered with the same pipeline. You’re looking at exactly what it looked at.
When Claude shows vs. checks
Claude makes this judgment automatically:
Shows inline when you asked to see something—“show me page 3,” “let me see the result,” “what does that look like now.” Also when presenting a finished result where seeing it is genuinely useful.
Checks quietly during iterative work. When Claude is nudging elements, confirming positions, verifying placements—the snapshots stay collapsed. They’re part of Claude’s working process, not something you need to see on every step.
The chat stays clean. The verification stays thorough.
Looking even closer
This pairs well with the other recent snapshot improvements. Claude can now render sharper views, zoom into specific regions, and inspect single elements on their own—all the tools for seeing your document the way it really is. Together, these make Claude’s visual understanding much more useful: it can look closely, and it can show you what it found.