The data plane
connectors by role · the two-gate auth model · MCP servers · folder-scoped files
Cowork sees your data through three surfaces. Connectors are the named OAuth integrations (Slack, M365, Drive, Notion, Gmail, Calendar, Atlassian…). MCP servers are the protocol underneath — community and vendor-published, often with hundreds of tools per server. Folder-scoped file access is Cowork's quiet edge: local disk reads and writes, in folders you explicitly mark, that no cloud-only agent can touch.
Anthropic's docs walk you through enabling each one. They don't tell you which connectors each role on your team actually needs, what the auth blast radius is, or when an MCP server is the right answer vs. a connector. That's the gap.
Five workflows: connectors by role, the two-gate auth model, MCP as the long tail, folder-scoped file access, and how connectors compound. Side notes on M365 Copilot connectors, ChatGPT connectors, and Copilot Workspace where the same idea exists.
// Anthropic's launch keynote — the connector demo. Watch on YouTube →