# This Tool Makes Claude Cowork 100x More Powerful

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Paul J Lipsky
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxAU266r2co
- **Дата:** 18.03.2026
- **Длительность:** 11:56
- **Просмотры:** 14,610
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/15055

## Описание

Claude Cowork is one of the most powerful AI agents out there, but there's a hidden limitation holding it back — and this one free tool completely unlocks it.

⚒️ Tools I Use Everyday:
🎙️ Wispr Flow (voice-to-text that actually cleans up your speech): https://ref.wisprflow.ai/l6qEejY
🧠 Kortex (the best Chrome extension for NotebookLM power users): https://kortex-notebooklm.com/ — Use code PAUL10 for 10% off

🔗 This video is not sponsored. Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something we'll receive a small commission.

0:00 Intro
0:22 The Problem
1:40 Zapier MCP
2:05 Gmail Demo
3:17 Setup Guide
5:07 Zapier Dashboard
6:03 Adding Tools
7:19 Claude Connectors
8:15 Live Demo
9:04 Scheduled Automation
10:15 Best Tools
10:58 Free Plan Info
11:11 Outro

## Транскрипт

### Intro []

Although Claude Coowwork is hands down one of the most powerful AI agents I've ever used, its full potential is held back, there are some very basic things that you can't do with it out of the box that severely handicap its strength. Luckily though, I found a very easy tool that you can add to Claude Co-work to fix that problem and to make it 100 times more powerful. So, let me explain

### The Problem [0:22]

the problem that I've been having with Claude Co-work. I absolutely love that I can connect this up with all my favorite third-party apps, things like Notion, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and I automate a lot of things I would normally have to do every day on my own. But I can only automate to a certain extent because you see, if you try to get co-work, let's say, send an email for you, it's not going to do it. It will draft the email, but it doesn't send it unless you first approve the email. And it doesn't stop there. You can connect it up with Asana, for instance, but Claude can't actually add any tasks unless you approve them first. And there are other apps like PayPal where you're supposed to be able to create invoices, but it just doesn't work. In fact, there are dozens and dozens of examples of thirdparty tools that kind of work with co-work, but also kind of don't. And some of that makes sense, right? You want to keep yourself in the loop to make sure that co-work isn't just going off on its own sending a bunch of emails to people you don't want it to send it to. But that also severely cuts back on how much you can actually automate with co-work. And as you begin to trust co-work more, you'll want to give it more power. Only you can't with these built-in connectors.

### Zapier MCP [1:40]

But I found an easy solution that does allow you to give co-work a lot more permissions. I'm sure you've probably already heard of Zapier before. This connects different web apps together so that actions in one app can automatically trigger actions in another app. They also have a tool called Zapier MCP. And with this co-work gets 100 times more powerful. Let me show you an example. So over here is my inbox. I

### Gmail Demo [2:05]

have an email here that's from Mike. I sent it to myself. Basically asking if I have time next week for a quick call. So, I'm going to come over to co-work and tell it to find that email and send a reply telling the person that, yeah, next week sounds good. Now, under here, you can choose what connectors you want to use. I have on the Gmail connector. If I go ahead and send that off, it first tells me that it drafted a reply, but it's not going to actually send it off. So, I'm going to tell it, no, I want you to actually send it, but it's telling me it can't do that. it physically does not have the ability to do that. So, we're going to start a new task, but this time I am going to turn off the Gmail connector, and I will turn on the Zapier MCP connector. And I'll tell it the exact same thing. And this time it says it not only found the email, drafted a reply, but also sent the reply. And you can see over here in my sent folder, here is the email it just sent out as a reply. And so all I had to do was switch from the Gmail connector to the Zapier connector. Let

### Setup Guide [3:17]

me show you how to set this up. Now, it's really easy and it's free to get started. Start by coming over to zapier. com/mcp. Now, if you've never heard of an MCP before, they allow AI assistants to connect to external tools. So when we come over here to claude and come over to customize and then connectors, these are all MCPs. Zapier also has an MCP, but what makes it unique is that it acts as a bridge between Claude and other tools. So if the tool you want to use isn't on this list, you may be able to use it through the Zap Your MCP. This instantly unlocks for you thousands of new connectors that aren't available natively inside the Claude connectors and makes co-work 50 times more powerful. But you can also use the Zapier MCP to connect Claude up with tools that are on this list that are official connectors. And the reason you may want to do that is because the permissions that Zapier MCP has for those tools are usually much broader than the direct connectors. And we've already seen that with Gmail, right? With the Gmail connector, it's not able to send emails without your permission, but with the Zapier MCP, it is. Returning back over to Zapier, if you already have an account with them, just go ahead and log in. If not, you will have to sign up for an account. Once you are logged in, it will probably take you to the regular Zapier dashboard, which isn't what we want. So, open up a new tab and navigate again to zapier. com/mcp and click right here where it says start building. Now, we are on the Zapier MCP

### Zapier Dashboard [5:07]

dashboard, and you want to start by setting up your first MCP server. You can do that over here on the left where it says new MCP server. Clicking on this will bring up this menu right here where you can choose which client you want to work with. Obviously, we are going to be working with Claude. So, click on that and then you'll see Claude MCP server over here on the left. And right here is where you can configure it. Come up to the top and click on connect. This will allow you to connect up the Zapier MCP with Claude. All you have to do is click on this button and follow all the instructions and it's going to set it up for you. Once you do that, Zapier is now talking with Claude. Click now on where it says configure and we can begin to add in some of the third party tools. You can do that by clicking right here where it says add tool. Search for

### Adding Tools [6:03]

whatever tool you want to use like Gmail or Notion. In this case, I'll add one I haven't added before, which is ASA. Anytime you click on one of those tools, it's going to show you all the permissions that you can give this MCP. In other words, everything that Claude is going to be able to do with you with the Zapier MCP connection to, in this case, Asana. And you can choose to give Claude permission to use all of these tools or only some of them. Once you choose the tools that you want Claude to have access to, click on connect. Next, Zapier is going to ask you to log in and connect up with that third-party tool. I have logged into my Asana account, so I can see that right here. And once you do that, click on where it says add tools. Over here, we can see the tool I just added, Asauna. Clicking on this dropown, you can see all the permissions or tools that Claude has access to through the Zapier MCP. And if you want to revoke one of these tools, you can just click on the three dots and click on remove from server. Generally speaking though, I like to give Claude access to all the tools and just leave them here in Zapier because you can actually configure the permissions directly inside of Claude.

### Claude Connectors [7:19]

So returning back to the Claude app, if you come back into connectors, you should now see one called Zapier Custom. And over here you can see all the tool permissions. If you've only added one tool, like I just added Asauna, you'll just see those tools right here. I've already added some for Gmail. So, you can see all the Gmail ones. You can see the ones for Google Sheets and Notion as well and PayPal. So, they're all going to appear in this one list underneath Zapier. Now, using these new tools is very easy. Start a new task inside of Co-work. Then, click on this plus icon. hover over connectors and make sure that Zapier is toggled on. If you also have a direct connector set up, like you can see I have the direct Asana connector set up here. I'm going to toggle that one off because again I want to use a Zapier one because it's more powerful.

### Live Demo [8:15]

So with that one toggled on, I will then just tell it to take action inside my Asana. So I might ask it create a new task in ASA for me called create thumbnail for Zapier MCP video. We'll submit that. It might ask you some questions. So I'll select no project there. And then here it's going to ask you permission to use the tool that it has access to which in this case is create task inside of a sauna using Zapier. So in order for it to be able to use that tool I need to give it permission. Now I have a choice here. I can choose to always allow or only allow once. You can make that decision for yourself. But the more you click always allow, the more co-work is going to be able to help you in an automated fashion. Because right now, I told it to

### Scheduled Automation [9:04]

create a task for me. But what I can do is come over to scheduled, set up a new scheduled task that will run, let's say, every single day at 6:00 a. m., and I'll have it go through my Gmail inbox, find items that I need to do something for, create a task for me in a sauna for each to-do list item, then label the emails in Gmail with the label called action item. All of those things you cannot do with the built-in connectors. The built-in Asana connector is not able to create tasks in Asana. And the built-in Gmail connector is not able to add labels to emails. So doing this all through Zapier unlocks this automation and makes this so much more useful, so much more helpful in having me automate everyday tasks for me like managing my Gmail and my to-do list. Now once you connect up one tool with the Zapier MCP, you can easily add another one by coming into your clawed MCP server and clicking on add tool. I am just beginning to

### Best Tools [10:15]

understand which tools are a lot more powerful with the Zapier MCP, but here are the main ones that I found that are so much more powerful. First of all, we have Telegram. This actually allows Claude Co-work to message you on Telegram. There's a little bit of an additional setup for this one, so I'm going to actually make an entire dedicated video for it. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on that one. Google Sheets is much better with the Zapier MCP. Obviously, Gmail and Asana are we covered those ones and PayPal and Notion as well, but I'm continually exploring what else this can do to help me automate all of my tasks.

### Free Plan Info [10:58]

The final thing you want to keep in mind is that you can do all this on the free plan. However, it does limit you to 100 tasks. After that, you will have to pay for a Zap year subscription if you want to keep using this. So, there you go.

### Outro [11:11]

That's how you can make Claude Co-work a hundred times more powerful just by connecting up the Zapier MCP. If you discover any really cool Zapier MCP tools that are making your life a lot easier that I might want to hear about, please let me know about them in the comments section down below. I would really love to hear how you guys are using this. And then also make sure that you subscribe to the channel because like I said, I'll be making a whole video soon about how you can actually use the Zapier MCP to have Claude Co-work message you on Telegram. Even a way that you can sort of message Claude Co-work using Telegram as well. So, if you don't want to miss out on that, definitely subscribe and then I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.