Claude Connectors: Give Claude Access to Every App You Use

About this video

Presenter David DeWinter, in partnership with Zapier, shows how to give Claude access to apps using the Zapier SDK and build a daily work briefing. He contrasts MCP — described as a menu of pre-built actions where you are stuck if what you need is not listed — with the Zapier SDK, which gives the agent the full API to read, write, search, filter and chain operations. Setup is done in Claude Code (the same approach works in other coding agents such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Windsurf) by pasting a copied setup prompt from the Zapier SDK docs; it takes about a minute, installs the SDK and CLI tools, and prompts a Zapier login. As of filming, the SDK is an open beta and free. He connects two apps — calendar (Google Calendar or Outlook) and email — then tests them by asking what is on the calendar today and to show unread emails from the past two days. Zapier is said to connect to almost 10,000 apps, including Slack, HubSpot and Notion. A longer copied prompt builds a daily brief with three sections — meetings (with attendees, agenda and recent context from related emails), important emails (with links to the originals), and newsletters under recent news — returned in about 10 seconds. The brief is then sent by email; when formatting arrives as plain text instead of HTML, he screenshots it, attaches it with Alt+V, and Claude rewrites the send using SDK code to produce a formatted email. The same flow is repeated in Claude Cowork, where the sandbox breaks normal login, so the workaround is running npx zapier-sdk create-client-credentials yourself and pasting the output back. Cowork can then schedule it as a daily task; the Zapier CEO is said to run a version every morning at 6 a.m. Upcoming work mentioned includes guardrails so agents cannot accidentally delete things, and event triggers.

Key takeaways

• Zapier SDK gives Claude full API access to read, write, search, filter and chain operations, unlike MCP’s pre-built action menu
• Setup is prompt-based in Claude Code and takes about a minute; the SDK was in free open beta as of filming
• Zapier connects to almost 10,000 apps including Slack, HubSpot and Notion, beyond just calendar and email
• The demo builds a three-section daily brief — meetings with email context, important emails, and newsletters — and emails it as formatted HTML
• In Claude Cowork, login requires running npx zapier-sdk create-client-credentials manually and pasting the output back due to the sandbox

Episode details: published April 21, 2026 · 8:15 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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