{"slug": "2-gb-user-interviews-into-claude-when-the-chat-limit-is-500-mb", "title": "2 GB user interviews into Claude when the chat limit is 500 MB", "summary": "Zernote, a user research platform, has integrated Anthropic's MCP Apps to enable uploading files up to 1800 MB into Claude, bypassing the 500 MB per-file limit, by using an iframe widget that streams files directly to Zernote's backend and storage. The company reports that 80% of UX researchers use LLMs for interview analysis, but models hallucinate after 7 to 9 interviews, prompting the development of this solution. The new MCP connector is live and free to try.", "body_md": "**Two months ago we moved Zernote's interface into MCP.**\n\nWe ran **37 interviews** with UX researchers. Around **80%** were already running **interview analysis** through an **LLM**. They paste transcripts into Claude, ask for themes. After **7 to 9 interviews** the **model** starts to **hallucinate**.\n\n**So we built the wrapper.** Tools for folders, interviews, transcripts, quotes. OAuth. Claude could read a corpus and cite it.\n\nAnd we still could not turn the UI off.\n\nOne thing blocked it: **upload limits**.\n\nUser researchers often record calls as **screencasts**. Such recordings can be up to 800 MB, 900 MB, and sometimes **1800 MB**.\n\nClaude has a hard limit: **500 MB** per file.\n\nWe went looking for how other people were getting files into Claude at all.\n\n**Brain Graph's** connector was doing it. Their tool takes a PDF, slides, or an audio file and lands it in their knowledge graph. Their caps are modest: around **150 MB** for audio, **35 MB** for documents. **Nowhere near a 1800 MB** screencast.\n\nThe limits were not the interesting part. **The mechanism was.**\n\nThey were not pushing bytes through the tool call. **They were opening a widget.**\n\nAnthropic [shipped MCP Apps](https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2026-01-26-mcp-apps/) in January 2026. Any connector can hand Claude an iframe, **a small application rendered directly inside the conversation**.\n\nThe iframe does not run on claude.ai. Anthropic serves it from its own sandboxed origin:\n\n```\nhttps://<hash>.claudemcpcontent.com\n```\n\nYour widget talks to your server through that origin.\n\nWhich makes the path: **user → browser → proxy → your backend**.\n\n**Bingo.**\n\nThe file goes straight from the browser to our backend. It never enters the context window.\n\nThe next step was **signed URLs to the bucket**.\n\nNow the upload bypasses our backend entirely. The **file goes straight** from the browser **to storage**. The widget notifies the backend afterwards, once the file has landed.\n\nAfter the upload, the file-processing microservice checks whether the user has enough tokens to process the file. If not, it returns a 403.\n\nAt the end of the upload the widget can insert a full prompt into the chat: the IDs of the uploaded files and the next steps.\n\nThe prompt is in English, with a request at the end to reply in the user's own language.\n\nThe last detail, and not a small one: presentation.\n\nThe widget renders inside the chat as an HTML block. Without careful styling its **interface hurts to look** at and feels foreign to the conversation.\n\nWe fixed that.\n\n*We got obsessed with working with our own tools through MCP and widgets.*\n\n*The images in the article you are reading were uploaded through one.*\n\nThis version of the MCP is already live in [our connector](https://zernote.com/mcp). It is free to try.\n\nIf you have any questions - feel free to text me at [ceo@zernote.com](mailto:ceo@zernote.com) :)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-gb-user-interviews-into-claude-when-the-chat-limit-is-500-mb", "canonical_source": "https://blog.zernote.com/2gb-user-interviews-into-claude/", "published_at": "2026-07-31 14:38:50+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-31 14:45:05.426496+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-tools", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Zernote", "Anthropic", "Claude", "MCP Apps", "Brain Graph"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-gb-user-interviews-into-claude-when-the-chat-limit-is-500-mb", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-gb-user-interviews-into-claude-when-the-chat-limit-is-500-mb.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-gb-user-interviews-into-claude-when-the-chat-limit-is-500-mb.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-gb-user-interviews-into-claude-when-the-chat-limit-is-500-mb.jsonld"}}