Skip to main content

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

See all 21 Google Docs tools

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

Connect more

Find another combination