Connect Google Drive to Claude Cowork
Give Claude Cowork governed access to Google Drive’s 16 tools through Runlayer, with identity, policy, scanning, and audit on every call.
Set up
Add Google Drive 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 Drive in Runlayer
Add Google Drive 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 Drive’s 16 tools show up in Claude Cowork’s own tool list.
Claude Cowork setup guide - 3
Sign in to Google Drive
Sign in the way Google Drive requires. Runlayer holds the credentials so they stay out of the client’s configuration.
- 4
Use Google Drive from Claude Cowork
Google Drive’s approved tools appear in Claude Cowork. Every call is checked against policy and recorded.
Tools
16 Google Drive tools in Claude Cowork
Runlayer policy decides which of these Claude Cowork users can call. 5 read data only and 1 can change or delete data.
Copy file
Create a copy of a file in Google Drive.
Create doc from markdown
Create a beautifully formatted Google Doc from markdown content.
Create file
Create a new file in Google Drive with text or base64-encoded content.
Create folder
Create a new folder in Google Drive to organize files.
Delete file
Delete a file or folder by moving it to trash.
Fetch file
Fetch a file from Google Drive using its Google Drive file ID (don't use exa nor brave to read files).
Get metadata
Get detailed metadata about a specific file or folder, including size, ownership, sharing status, modification dates, and more.
List folder
List all files and folders within a specific folder.
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 Drive 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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