MCP & connectors

The app's settings hold a connectors or integrations control — menus move, so look for the nearest thing under those two words. Through it the app can fetch what those tools hold — Drive, Gmail, calendars, project trackers — into the window. There's no magic in how: a connector translates the tool's data into text the window can read, and your requests into actions the tool understands. The model never "sees" your inbox; it reads a text rendering of it, riding in the window like everything else you've studied here.

The plumbing standard behind this is MCP — Model Context Protocol: an open protocol for describing a tool to a model. An MCP server announces "here is what I can do — search these files, create this task, read this calendar — and here is what each action needs." Any model that speaks the protocol can use any tool that offers it, which is why the same Notion or Linear connection works from the chat app, the command line, and an agent alike: they're all talking to the same server, in the same language.

Two working consequences:

• Connections are capabilities, and capabilities are risk. A connection that can read puts text in the window; one that can write performs what the text asked for. Read first, write after trust, and keep an approval step on anything that leaves your account.
• Try one chore today. Connect one tool and ask for something you'd never bother doing yourself: "find the three oldest unanswered emails from real people and draft replies for my review." The draft-for-review shape is the habit worth keeping.

Say it back in one line: what does a connector actually pass to the model?