# Connectors and the marketplace: plugging Claude into your apps
Ask Claude "summarize my unread email from the last two days and flag anything that needs a reply," and with the Gmail connector enabled, it actually reads your inbox and does it. That is the shift connectors deliver: Claude stops being a smart conversation partner that only knows what you paste in, and starts being an assistant that reaches into your real tools at the moment you ask.
This lesson is about how that works on Claude.ai, what data actually moves, and how to reason about the trust boundary so you can plug Claude into Gmail, Drive, and Calendar without handing over more than you intend.
A connector is a pre-built bridge between Claude and an external service (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and a growing list of third-party apps) that Claude can call during a conversation when it decides the request needs that data.
Under the hood, connectors are built on MCP (Model Context Protocol), the open standard Anthropic published for exposing tools and data to models. You met MCP at a concept level earlier. The thing to internalize here: a connector is just a hosted MCP server that Anthropic (or a vetted partner) runs and certifies, so you do not have to stand up your own server or write any glue code. You toggle it on, authorize it, and it appears as a capability Claude can use.
The connector marketplace is the catalog of these certified connectors inside Claude.ai. Browse it from Settings → Connectors. Some are first-party (Google Workspace), many are third-party (think project trackers, support tools, knowledge bases), and each one declares what it can read or do before you connect.
The official starting point is the Claude.ai connectors directory and docs. Read the permission summary on any connector before you click Connect.
Here is what happens end to end when you ask Claude to fetch something from Google Drive.
You type:
> "In my Drive, find the doc called 'Q3 Board Review' and tell me the net revenue retentionnet revenue retentionNet Revenue Retention measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained and grown from existing customers over a period, including upsell and expansion, net of downgrades and churn.View full definition → figure."
1. Claude recognizes it needs an external tool. Your prompt references your Drive, so Claude proposes calling the Google Drive connector. The first time, you go through an OAuth consent screen from Google, the same kind you have approved a hundred times. You grant Claude scoped access.
2. Claude searches, not browses. It issues a search to the Drive connector for "Q3 Board Review." The connector returns matching file metadata (titles, IDs), and Claude requests the contents of the one that matches.
3. Only that document's text enters the context window. Claude reads the returned content, locates the net revenue retentionnet revenue retentionNet Revenue Retention measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained and grown from existing customers over a period, including upsell and expansion, net of downgrades and churn.View full definition → number, and answers. Your other thousand Drive files were never opened.
4. You see the tool call. Claude.ai shows you that it used the connector and which document it pulled, so the action is auditable in the transcript.
That last point matters. Connectors are not a background daemon scraping your whole account. They fire on specific requests, fetch specific things, and show their work.
This is the part people get wrong, so be precise.
What goes to Claude when a connector runs:
What does NOT happen:
The honest caveat: once content enters the context windowcontext windowThe context window is the maximum amount of text (measured in tokens) a language model can process at once, including both the input prompt and the generated output.View full definition → for that conversation, it is part of that conversation. If you paste an unread email into a chat and then share that chat, the email goes with it. Connectors reduce manual copy-paste, but the data they pull still lives in the transcript. Treat a chat that touched real email or financial docs with the same care you would treat a forwarded thread.
When you authorize a Google connector, the OAuth screen lists scopes. Pay attention to read-only versus read-write.
Grant the narrower scope when the connector offers a choice. You can revoke any connector's access at two layers: inside Claude (Settings → Connectors → Disconnect) and at the provider (your Google Account's Security → Third-party access). Revoking at Google instantly cuts Claude off regardless of Claude-side state, which is the stronger control.
Claude Connectors and Remote MCP Explained
Connectors get more powerful when combined with the other Claude features you have already learned.
In a Project, you can enable specific connectors so every chat in that Project inherits them. A "Weekly Investor Update" Project with the Drive and Calendar connectors on means you can open a new chat and immediately say "pull this week's metrics doc and my Monday calendar, draft the update." The Project's custom instructions plus its connectors give Claude a consistent, tool-equipped workspace.
With Skills, connectors become the data source for a repeatable procedure. A Skill is a packaged set of instructions (and optionally code) Claude follows for a recurring task. A "Board Deck Prep" Skill might say: use the Drive connector to fetch the latest financial model, extract the three headline figures, format them as a summary table. The Skill defines the steps; the connector supplies the live data each time you run it.
This is the real unlock: connectors are not a standalone feature, they are the input layer for Projects, Skills, and Artifacts working together.
Knowledge check
1. What fundamental shift does enabling a connector create in how Claude operates?
2. In technical terms, what is a connector 'under the hood'?
3. Why does the lesson recommend reading the permission summary on a connector before clicking Connect?
4. Select ALL statements that correctly describe the connector marketplace in Claude.ai.
Select all the correct answers.
5. Select ALL that are true about what happens when you ask Claude to fetch data from Google Drive.
Select all the correct answers.
The certified marketplace covers common SaaS tools, but your company runs internal systems too. Because connectors are just remote MCP servers, you can add your own.
On Claude.ai (Team and Enterprise plans), an admin can add a custom connector by pointing Claude at a remote MCP server URL. Your internal tool, a customer databasecustomer databaseCustomer Relationship Management: software and strategy to manage and analyse customer interactions throughout their lifecycle.View full definition →, an inventory APIAPIApplication Programming Interface: a standardised interface that lets applications communicate and exchange data without knowing each other's internal workings.View full definition →, becomes available to Claude exactly like a marketplace connector, gated by your own auth.
A minimal remote MCP server that exposes one tool looks like this:
These actions are compiled in the role's Playbook.
from mcp.server.fastmcp import FastMCP
mcp = FastMCP("inventory")
@mcp.tool()
def get_stock(sku: str) -> dict:
"""Return current stock level for a product SKU."""
record = warehouse_db.lookup(sku)
return {"sku": sku, "on_hand": record.quantity, "location": record.bin}
if __name__ == "__main__":
mcp.run(transport="streamable-http")Deploy that behind your authentication, register its URL as a custom connector, and now "how many units of SKU-4471 are in stock?" hits your warehouse in real time. The full spec and SDKs for building these live at modelcontextprotocol.io and in Anthropic's MCP docs.
Two things to keep straight:
You will hear "connector," "MCP," and "tool use" thrown around interchangeably. Sort them by surface:
The mental model that carries across all three: MCP is the protocol, and connectors are the friendly, certified, click-to-enable face of it inside the Claude apps. Learning to reason about scopes and the trust boundary here transfers directly to the APIAPIApplication Programming Interface: a standardised interface that lets applications communicate and exchange data without knowing each other's internal workings.View full definition → and Claude Code surfaces you will see next in this path.
Put it together. You want a Monday morning briefing.
1. Create a Project called "Monday Brief."
2. Enable the Gmail and Calendar connectors on it.
3. Add a custom instruction: "Every brief should list unread email needing a reply, then today's meetings with any prep needed."
4. Each Monday, open a chat and say: "Run my Monday brief."
Claude reads the unread mail (read scope), checks today's calendar, and produces the briefing as an Artifact you can edit. No manual copy-paste, the data pulled is visible in the transcript, and nothing left your accounts except what that task required.