What access should she give?

Read-only access to the calendar. Least privilege: to find clashes, it just needs to look. A reading mistake costs an inaccurate tip, not a cancelled class.

Disconnect it until it’s needed. That’s OpenAI’s own advice: turn off connectors you don’t need for the current task. Every open access is one more door a trap can come through.

What should she do on this screen?

Decline: finding meetings doesn’t require deleting email. The first two questions from the lesson: what exactly is it asking for, and does the task need it? Finding meetings doesn’t need deleting email, so this app is asking for too much.

It’s a common way to connect apps to different AIs. Anthropic opened MCP in 2024 as a common “plug.” By late 2025 it was supported by ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and others, with over 10,000 servers.

Connectors: the agent sees your day

Lesson 8 of 22 in the course “AI Agents for Life”. Free, with animations and a quiz.

Consultant or assistant

As long as the assistant can’t see your life, it’s a consultant: you retell what you have tomorrow, and it gets things wrong wherever you forgot something. Connectors turn it into an assistant. They’re the “connect Gmail,” “connect Calendar,” “connect Google Drive” buttons. For example, at launch in July 2025, ChatGPT agent could use connectors for Gmail and GitHub. With access, the agent sees on its own that your 10:00 class overlaps a shift. But only where you let it in: that’s what this whole lesson is about.

MCP: a common plug

It used to be that each app had to be hooked up to each assistant separately, like chargers before USB-C. In November 2024 Anthropic opened up the MCP protocol: a common “plug” any app can use to connect to any AI. The idea caught on. By December 2025 there were over 10,000 public MCP servers, the protocol was supported by ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Cursor and VS Code, and Anthropic handed it to a non-profit foundation under the Linux Foundation. For you it means one thing: there will be more and more connections, so knowing whom you give access to matters more and more.

Read or act

Any access has two levels. Read: view the calendar, emails, files. Act: send in your name, delete, move meetings, pay. A mistake in reading is an inaccurate tip. A mistake in acting is an email that’s already gone to your lecturer, or a deleted folder. Hence the security people’s main rule, the principle of least privilege: give exactly as much access as the task needs. A morning briefing only needs reading. If a service lets you choose “read only,” choose it.

Read the permissions screen

When you connect a service, an “Allow access” screen appears with a list. Most people hit “Allow” without reading. Ask yourself three questions. What exactly is it asking for: just reading, or sending and deleting too? Does my task need it? Where do I switch it off later? With Google, all connected apps are listed in your account under third-party connections, and you can revoke access there in one click. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT agent, it advised turning off connectors you don’t need for the current task.

How the briefing comes together

A morning briefing is the perfect first agent with access: it only reads, yet it’s very useful. Step one: today’s calendar. Two: overnight email, but only from people, no newsletters or ads. Three: clashes and deadlines, meaning what overlaps and what’s urgent. And the result in three lines: what matters today. Liza checks it on the bus in a minute instead of 15 minutes scrolling her inbox. Nothing changes without her: if the agent sees a clash, it only tells her.

Try it: the morning briefing

Connect your calendar and email to your assistant. If you can choose read only, do. Paste the brief below and run it once right now to see the result. Not connecting email? Just paste your day’s schedule and a couple of emails into the chat by hand: the brief works that way too. Note the “never” on the card: the agent doesn’t reply, delete or reschedule anything. In the autopilot lesson we’ll put this briefing on a schedule so it arrives by itself at 7:30.

Check yourself

What access should she give?
Correct answer: Read-only access to the calendar. Least privilege: to find clashes, it just needs to look. A reading mistake costs an inaccurate tip, not a cancelled class.
What should he do?
Correct answer: Disconnect it until it’s needed. That’s OpenAI’s own advice: turn off connectors you don’t need for the current task. Every open access is one more door a trap can come through.
What should she do on this screen?
Correct answer: Decline: finding meetings doesn’t require deleting email. The first two questions from the lesson: what exactly is it asking for, and does the task need it? Finding meetings doesn’t need deleting email, so this app is asking for too much.
What is MCP for?
Correct answer: It’s a common way to connect apps to different AIs. Anthropic opened MCP in 2024 as a common “plug.” By late 2025 it was supported by ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and others, with over 10,000 servers.

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