Connect Serval to Claude Cowork
Give Claude Cowork governed access to Serval’s 402 tools through Runlayer, with identity, policy, scanning, and audit on every call.
Set up
Add Serval to Claude Cowork in four steps
Admins approve the server once. Everyone in Claude Cowork then gets it through the same governed connection.
- 1
Add Serval to Runlayer
Serval isn’t in the Runlayer catalog yet, so an admin adds it by its MCP server URL.
Adding a connector manually - 2
Connect Claude Cowork to Runlayer
Claude Cowork gets connector tools through the Runlayer Plugin. With direct tool listing turned on for your deployment, Serval’s 402 tools show up in Claude Cowork’s own tool list.
Claude Cowork setup guide - 3
Sign in to Serval
Sign in the way Serval requires. Runlayer holds the credentials so they stay out of the client’s configuration.
- 4
Use Serval from Claude Cowork
Serval’s approved tools appear in Claude Cowork. Every call is checked against policy and recorded.
Tools
402 Serval tools in Claude Cowork
Runlayer policy decides which of these Claude Cowork users can call.
Add entity type field
Deprecated: use POST /v2/entity-type-fields.
Add label to app instance
DEPRECATED: use AddTagToSubject.
Add tag to subject
Attach a tag to a subject (resource, role, app instance, workflow, or guidance).
Add ticket assignment group
Add a group to the team's configured assignment groups.
Add ticket relevant asset
Add a relevant asset to a ticket.
Aggregate entities
Aggregate live-entity counts for one entity schema (database), grouped by entity type or by creation-time bucket (day or month).
Archive entity
Archive an entity, hiding it from active browse while keeping its key reserved so the key cannot be reused.
Archive ticket
Move a ticket into cold storage, removing it from most views.
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 Serval 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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