At the end of Issue 6, I said the next issue would cover connections.

Then real life happened. A letter landed on my desk, and it made too good an example to pass up. So Issue 7 turned into a walkthrough of building a skill to review a real document and draft a response.

I said we'd get back to connectors. This is that issue.

And honestly, the detour helped. A skill and a connector work as a pair. Issue 7 showed you how to write the instructions. This issue shows you how to let those instructions reach your actual email, calendar, and files.

A skill is a set of instructions you write once and reuse every time. Same steps, same standard, same output format. In Issue 6, I compared it to an Air Force technical order: nobody improvises a landing gear inspection. You follow the book.

I use skills every day. They still have one limit.

A skill still waits on you to hand it the material.

Your skill might know exactly how to summarize a report. But someone still has to find the report, copy it, and paste it in. That someone is you.

I subscribe to a macro research service. “Macro” is short for macroeconomics: the big-picture forces that move the whole economy, like interest rates, inflation, jobs numbers, and what the Federal Reserve is likely to do next. A macro research service tracks those forces and explains what they could mean for markets.

They send me three or four emails a day, and they all land in my Gmail account: market commentary, reactions to new economic data, and their read on where things are heading.

Each email is useful on its own. What I really care about is the bigger picture. Is today's take consistent with what they said Monday? Is the story shifting? Are they quietly walking something back?

Answering that used to mean reading every email and keeping a running narrative in my head. Realistically, I didn't do it consistently.

So I built a skill. Every day, it:

1.       Finds that day’s emails from that one sender

2.       Summarizes each one

3.       Compares them to the previous five business days

4.       Tells me how today fits into the overall narrative, and what changed

But the emails live in Gmail, and the skill lives in Claude. If I had to forward or paste four emails across every night, I'd quit within two weeks.

So I connected Claude to my Gmail. 

A connector is a secure link between your AI tool and another app you already use: your email, your calendar, your files.

Without a connector, you're the mail clerk. You walk every letter to your assistant's desk by hand. With a connector, you've given your assistant a key to the mailroom and told them which box to check.

You decide which apps get connected. You can disconnect anytime. And the AI can only see what your own account can see. Nothing more.

Once Gmail was connected, I didn't hand my skill anything. I just told it the sender's name. It goes and gets the emails itself.

It took a handful of clicks. In Claude, the steps were:

1.       Go to Customize → Connectors

2.       Find Gmail in the list

3.       Click Connect

4.       A Google sign-in window opens. Sign in to the Gmail account you want connected

5.       Google shows you what Claude is asking permission to do. Review it and click Allow

That fifth step is the “authorization.” It's the part that makes people nervous, so it's worth slowing down on.

In plain terms, three things happen:

•         You sign in with Google, not with Claude. That sign-in window belongs to Google. Your Gmail password never goes to Claude.

•         Google asks your permission. It spells out what Claude would be able to do with your account. Nothing gets connected until you say yes.

•         Google hands Claude a digital pass. Picture a hotel key card. The front desk (Google) issues it, and it opens one door: the account you approved. It's not a copy of your password, and it doesn't open anything else.

It stays connected going forward. This is a one-time setup. You don't sign in again every morning. That's what makes my nightly report possible: at 9:59 p.m., while I'm not touching anything, the scheduled task uses that same pass to read the day's emails. I set it up once, and it's been working ever since.

You can take the pass back anytime. In Claude, the Connect button turns into a Disconnect button. Click it, and the link is gone. You can also cancel access from your Google account’s security settings, under your connections to third-party apps. Either way, you hold the off switch.

Gmail and the other Google connectors are available on Claude's paid plans. If you're on a work account, your company may need to turn connectors on first, so ask before you try.

Menu names change from time to time, but the pattern stays the same: find the app, connect it, sign in with that app, approve.

Once a skill can reach your data on its own, you have two options for running it.

Option 1: A scheduled task. This is how I run mine. Every night at 9:59 p.m., it fires on its own. It pulls the day's emails, compares them to the past week, and emails me the summary. When I wake up, it's sitting in my inbox with my coffee.

I don't open anything. I don't remember to run it. It just shows up.

Two things worth knowing: scheduled tasks, like connectors, are only on Claude's paid plans (Pro and up). And they run on Claude's side, not your computer's, so they fire on time even if your laptop is asleep or closed.

Option 2: Part of an agent. An agent is AI you hand a bigger goal to, not a single task. It decides which tools it needs along the way. I've set this same workflow up as an agent too. In that setup, the agent knows it can check my email when the job calls for it, the same way you'd trust an experienced employee to pull the file they need without asking.

You don't need to start with agents. A scheduled task is the easier, more reliable first step. The same skill and the same connector work both ways, so what you build now isn't throwaway.

•         The skill makes the work consistent

•         The connector gives it access to the material

•         The schedule takes you out of the “remember to do it” loop

One habit from the flight line still applies here: trust, but verify.

•         Connect only what you're comfortable with. Start with something low-stakes, like a newsletter you subscribe to, not your most sensitive inbox.

•         Spot-check the first couple of weeks. Read a few of the original emails next to the summary. Make sure it's catching what matters.

•         Keep your judgment in the loop. My morning summary tells me how the story is shifting. Deciding what it means is still my job.

You don't need a macro research service to use this. Four easy pairings to try:

1.       Gmail + a newsletter you never get around to reading. A daily or weekly digest of just the parts that matter to you.

2.       Google Calendar + Sunday evening. A week-ahead brief: what's coming, what needs prep, where the crunch days are.

3.       Google Drive + a folder you share with family or a team. A weekly summary of what changed.

4.       Gmail + receipts or order confirmations. A monthly roundup of what you bought and from where.

Starter prompt (adjust the details):

“Every [day/week], search my Gmail for emails from [sender]. Summarize each one in 2–3 sentences. Then compare them to the emails from the previous [5 business days / 4 weeks] and tell me what's consistent, what's changed, and anything I should pay attention to. Keep the whole summary under one page.”

Run it by hand a few times first. Once you like the output, put it on a schedule.

Connect one app. Just one. Then ask Claude a question you’d normally have to dig for yourself, like “What did [person] say about [topic] in their last few emails?”

Watch what happens when you don't have to hand it anything.

Hit reply and tell me what you connected. I read every response.

This issue showed you what my nightly report does. Next week, I'll walk you through setting up your own scheduled task, step by step, so the work shows up without you lifting a finger.

See you then.

— Eric

Let's connect on LinkedIn. I post there every Tuesday and Thursday, and it's the easiest place to keep the conversation going between issues: linkedin.com/in/eric-skelton-ai-over-50-newsletter