Connectors — How to plug Claude into your systems
Drive, Gmail, HubSpot, Notion, Calendar… Official bridges that don't need a programmer. Log in once, use forever.
TL;DR
A connector is an official bridge between Claude and an external system (Drive, Gmail, HubSpot, etc). You log in once. From then on, Claude reads, writes, and acts on those tools as if it were you.
- 1 Connectors — side tab in Settings
- 2 Connect button — starts the service OAuth flow
- 3 OAuth scope — authorize only what is necessary (read or read+write)
- 4 Active status — green = connected, gray = disconnected
Why this changes the game
Before the connector, you had to copy and paste data from each system into the chat with the AI. Now:
- “Pull the latest pipeline from HubSpot and tell me where we have deals stalled for more than 14 days.”
- “Read my email from last week and identify 3 opportunities that went unanswered.”
- “Pull the ‘Q1 Sales’ spreadsheet from Drive and cross-reference it with the CRM.”
Claude does all of this without you ever touching the file.
Full catalog (May/2026)
Google Workspace
- Google Drive — read/create documents, spreadsheets, slides
- Gmail — read, write, organize email
- Google Calendar — schedule, check agenda
- Google Docs / Sheets / Slides — edit directly
Productivity
- Notion — read and edit wikis and databases
- Confluence / Jira (Atlassian) — documentation and tickets
- Linear — issues and projects
- Asana — tasks
- Miro — visual boards
CRM and Sales
- HubSpot — contacts, deals, pipeline
- Intercom — customer support
- Salesforce (via custom MCP)
Payments and Finance
- Stripe — subscriptions, billing, metrics
- Square — POS and physical sales
- PayPal — transactions
- Plaid — open banking
Communication
- Slack — messages, channels
- Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, OneDrive)
Development
- GitHub / GitLab — repositories, PRs, issues
- Sentry — production errors
- Cloudflare — domains and security
Automation
- Zapier — thousands of apps via existing Zaps
- n8n (via MCP)
- Box — enterprise storage
The list grows every week. See the updated official catalog.
The difference between Connector and MCP
Technically, every connector is an MCP under the hood.
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the open standard created by Anthropic to connect AI with any system. Works like USB: a standard protocol.
- Connector is an MCP that’s ready and officially maintained. You don’t configure anything. Click and use.
When you want to integrate with an internal company system that doesn’t have a ready-made connector, you build your own MCP server (a technical topic — for the developer on the team).
Step-by-step — connecting your first
Connect Google Drive to Claude
- Go to claude.ai and log in
- In the side menu, click Settings → Connectors
- Find Google Drive → click Connect
- You’ll be redirected to your Google account → authorize
- Return to Claude → the Drive icon appears in the toolbar
- In a conversation, enable Drive (the icon) and ask: “list my 10 most recent files”
Connect HubSpot
- Settings → Connectors → HubSpot
- Log in with your HubSpot admin account
- Authorize the scope: contacts, deals, companies
- Return to Claude
- Test: “what were the 5 closed-won deals in the last month?”
Connect Gmail
- Settings → Connectors → Gmail
- Authorize the read scope (and write, if you want it to reply)
- Test: “read my emails from the week and split into: action required / informational / spam”
What connectors can do (and what they shouldn’t)
Should
- Read data for analysis
- Summarize content
- Cross-reference information between systems
- Suggest actions
- Execute simple, reversible actions (send an email, create an event)
Shouldn’t (without human confirmation)
- Mass-delete records
- Charge a customer (Stripe without manual checkout)
- Move money
- Send email to an entire list
- Fire someone in Asana 😅
Gotchas
- Minimum OAuth scope: only grant permission for what it needs. Don’t authorize “read all emails” if you’ll only use one folder.
- Personal vs corporate account: prefer connecting with a dedicated automation account (create a user “claude@yourcompany.com”).
- Audit: keep control of who in the company authorized which connectors. Aikido can track this.
- Real time: not every connector is instantaneous. Drive can take minutes to reflect a recent change.
- Subscription plan: some premium connectors require Claude Pro, Team, or Enterprise.
When to use a connector vs Skill
| Scenario | Use |
|---|---|
| ”Read this file right now” | Direct upload in chat |
| ”Pull a recent file from Drive” | Connector |
| ”Whenever I ask for analysis, do it in this format” | Skill |
| ”Cross CRM with email to predict churn” | Connector + Skill |
The combination Connector + Skill is where the magic lives. The connector brings the data. The skill says how to process it.
Next step
Apply all this in practice: Data Analysis with AI — from a loose spreadsheet to executive diagnosis.
Or see how to build an interface on top of the data Claude discovered — with Lovable.
Tarefa
Connect a real connector (Drive or Gmail). In a new conversation, ask Claude: 'summarize the most recent document/email in 3 lines.' Paste the output.
Connector active in your Settings. Claude's output names a file or email by name (not a generic answer). Summary is at most 3 lines.