Connect Google Docs to Claude Cowork
Give Claude Cowork governed access to Google Docs’s 21 tools through Runlayer, with identity, policy, scanning, and audit on every call.
Set up
Add Google Docs to Claude Cowork in four steps
Admins approve the server once. Everyone in Claude Cowork then gets it through the same governed connection.
- 1
Approve Google Docs in Runlayer
Add Google Docs from the catalog and choose who can use it and which of its tools are allowed.
- 2
Connect Claude Cowork to Runlayer
Claude Cowork gets connector tools through the Runlayer Plugin. With direct tool listing turned on for your deployment, Google Docs’s 21 tools show up in Claude Cowork’s own tool list.
Claude Cowork setup guide - 3
Sign in to Google Docs
Sign in the way Google Docs requires. Runlayer holds the credentials so they stay out of the client’s configuration.
- 4
Use Google Docs from Claude Cowork
Google Docs’s approved tools appear in Claude Cowork. Every call is checked against policy and recorded.
Tools
21 Google Docs tools in Claude Cowork
Runlayer policy decides which of these Claude Cowork users can call. 7 read data only and 5 can change or delete data.
Add comment
Add a comment to a specific text range in a Google Docs document.
Apply doc updates
Apply an ordered batch of raw Google Docs API Request objects to a document via documents.batchUpdate.
Create file
Markdown (recommended, default path): uploaded as text/markdown and converted by Google Drive's native markdown importer (headers, bold, italic, lists, tables, blockquotes, fenced code blocks, links,…
Delete between text
Delete a whole block of a document — a heading and everything beneath it, tables included — by naming the text at each end instead of computing character indices.
Delete text
Delete all occurrences of specific text from a Google Docs document.
Edit table
Structurally edit an existing table in a Google Doc: insert/delete rows and columns, set a column width, style a cell (background color, vertical alignment, padding), replace a cell's text, or…
Fetch
Fetch the content of a Google Docs document using its document ID.
Fetch all tabs
Fetch content from all tabs in a Google Docs document.
Control
What Runlayer can see and stop in Claude Cowork
Some controls apply to every client at the gateway. Others depend on what Claude Cowork exposes to Runlayer.
Gateway policy (available)
Every Google Docs call from Claude Cowork passes through Runlayer, where your policies can allow, alert, mask, or block it.
Audit trail (available)
Each call is recorded with the user, Claude Cowork as the client, the tool, and the policy and scanner decisions.
Anthropic inference hooks (available)
Anthropic Inference hooks let Runlayer check Claude Cowork prompts before inference.
OTLP telemetry (available)
Claude Cowork can send supported OpenTelemetry events to Runlayer for observe-only session visibility.
Stop a call before it runs (available)
Runlayer can reject a Claude Cowork prompt before Anthropic runs it, which stops the whole request rather than one tool call.
Block output after it runs (available)
Because Runlayer checks the full prompt, tool results in it can be blocked before the model sees them.
Redact output in place (not available)
Runlayer cannot mask content in Claude Cowork. The gateway still applies policy to the call.
In Claude Cowork
- Cowork session data sent over OpenTelemetry is for monitoring only and cannot stop anything.
Frequently asked questions
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