Connectors

A connector is a link between Claude and a service you already use, so that it can go and look in your drive, your calendar, your tickets or your email. Everything so far has needed you to bring the information: type it, paste it, attach it. A connector removes that step.

That is a genuine change in what it is useful for, and it is the point in this course where the question stops being “is the answer any good” and starts being “what did I just hand over”.

Connecting one

Two routes to the same place. From inside a chat, the + in the lower left, then Connectors, then Manage connectors. Or from your account, Customize > Connectors.

You pick a service, you read what it says it can do, and you approve it. The approval screen belongs to that service rather than to Claude, which is why it looks like signing in to them and not like signing in here. That is the right way round: they are the ones granting access to your account with them.

On a Team or Enterprise account an administrator has to enable a connector before anyone can use it, and enabling it does not connect anybody. Each person still authenticates individually, with their own permissions.

The one reassuring fact

A connector cannot see anything you cannot see. It inherits your permissions from the service. A document you have no access to in the drive is a document the connector cannot reach either.

That is worth knowing precisely, because it rules out the thing people worry about first. Connecting your work drive does not give Claude the whole drive. It gives Claude your view of the drive.

The less reassuring fact

It gives Claude your entire view of the drive, not the part you had in mind.

This is the thing worth sitting with. When you connect a service you are not granting access to a purpose, you are granting access to a surface. You connected it so you could ask about last quarter’s figures. What you granted was every file you can open.

The documentation is direct about it:

When connecting to a service, you’re granting Claude permission to access and potentially modify data within that service based on your account permissions. Only connect services you trust and need for your workflows.

Note modify. Many connectors can write as well as read: create the ticket, send the message, move the file. That is often the point. It is also a different decision from reading, and the connect screen presents both together.

So the question to ask before connecting anything is not “do I trust Claude”. It is: if this could read and change everything I can, in this service, would that be fine? For a personal notes app, yes. For the shared drive with the payroll folder in it that you happen to have access to, think for a second longer.

Where it lands afterwards

Whatever a connector fetches goes into your conversation, and your conversation is stored in your account. A connector that reads customer records puts customer records into a chat history.

For most work that is fine and it is the same exposure as having the file open. For anything sensitive the honest options are narrower than they look: do not connect it, or paste in only the part you need. An incognito chat keeps it out of your history and out of memory, which is worth something, but lesson 2 was clear that incognito is not deletion. The chat is still retained.

Reviewing and disconnecting

Customize > Connectors lists everything you have connected, and for each one you can disconnect it, change its settings, or review the permissions and access it has. Go and look occasionally.

Two habits, both about thirty seconds:

When you connect something, read the permission screen rather than clicking through it. It is the only moment the full grant is displayed. Afterwards you have to go looking.

Disconnect what you connected for one task. The connector you added to answer one question in March is still connected in November, and you have not thought about it since. This is the same instinct as revoking an app you stopped using.

When is a connector worth it?

Reading things scattered across places. “Find the three documents about the March count and tell me where they disagree” is a hard afternoon and a good connector task.

Recurring lookups. Anything you would otherwise open four tabs for.

Not: anything you would not want in your chat history. See above.

Not: writing, before you have watched it read. Some services let you choose a narrower scope when you authorise, and some hand over everything the connector asks for. Look for the choice, take the narrow one when it is offered, and where it is not, spend a fortnight only asking the connector to read things before you start asking it to change them. Nobody does this and everybody who has had a bad experience wishes they had.

Your turn

Connect one thing, use it once, inspect it, and disconnect it. The whole exercise is about ten minutes and the point is the inspection.

1. Connect the least sensitive service you use. A personal notes app, or a drive with nothing confidential in it.

2. Read the permission screen before you accept. Write down, on paper, what it says it can do.

3. Do one real task with it.

4. Now ask, in the chat:

   What can you do with the connector I just added? List every action it makes
   available to you, including anything that changes or creates data.

Check: compare that list with what you wrote down at step 2. If the list is longer than you expected, or contains a verb like create, update, delete or send that you did not notice, that is the lesson. You granted a surface, not a purpose, and this is how you find out which surface.

5. Disconnect it, then confirm it is gone:

   Search my notes for the thing you found earlier.

Check: it says it cannot, because the connector is gone. Reconnect it if you want it, now that you know what it does.

Recap

A connector lets Claude read and often write in a service you already use. It inherits your permissions exactly: it cannot see what you cannot see.

It can see everything you can see in that service, which is broader than the reason you connected it. Read the permission screen at the moment it is shown, because that is the only time it is shown.

Whatever it fetches lands in your chat history. Incognito, or do not connect it, for anything you would not want stored.

Disconnect what you added for one task. Add write access after you have watched it read.

Next: where it goes wrong, which is not where the folklore says.