What data can Claude access through connectors?

On its own, Claude knows what’s in your conversation and what it learned in training. Connectors are how it reaches everything else: your files, your inbox, your CRM, or another service’s data. Anthropic built them on MCP (Model Context Protocol), an open standard, so any company or developer can make one.

What a connector gives Claude

Kind of app	Examples in Claude’s directory	What Claude can do with it
Files and docs	Google Drive, Notion, Microsoft 365	Search, read and create documents
Messages	Slack, Gmail	Read threads, summarise, draft replies
Marketing and design	HubSpot, Canva, Asana	Read campaign analytics, update contacts, create designs, manage tasks
SEO and market data	Semrush, Ahrefs, Similarweb	Keywords, backlinks, rankings, site traffic
Your own account numbers	Supermetrics	Ad and social account metrics from 200+ sources

Two things hold for all of them:

• Claude uses your permissions. It sees what your account in that app can see, nothing more.
• Many connectors can act, not just read. Claude can send a Slack message or update a HubSpot contact if the connector offers it. You approve tool calls as they happen, and on Team and Enterprise plans an owner can set each kind of tool to always allowed, needs approval or blocked.

Two kinds of connector

Directory connectors are listed in Claude’s Connectors Directory: open Customize → Connectors and click +. Most are built by the app’s own maker, and the public listings carry an “Anthropic verified” badge. The public catalogue at claude.com/connectors listed over 1,000 in October 2026.

Custom connectors are any remote MCP server you add by its URL. Anthropic doesn’t verify them, and the server has to be reachable on the public internet, because Claude connects from Anthropic’s cloud, not your computer. They work on every plan; the Free plan allows one.

What’s missing: public social media

Search the directory for Reddit, X, TikTok or Instagram and you won’t find a connector that reads public posts and comments. What you’ll find instead:

• vidIQ reads YouTube: search, channel and video stats, transcripts and comments. Its listing also mentions some Instagram and TikTok data. If YouTube is all you need, look at it.
• TikTok for Business manages ad campaigns, not organic videos or comments.
• Typefully and Metricool schedule posts. They write; they don’t research.
• Supermetrics and Windsor.ai report your own accounts’ numbers, not what anyone else is saying.

So when you ask Claude what people in r/socialmedia are arguing about this week, it has no reliable way to read the threads. Web search may turn up a page, but the comments, which is where the useful part is, rarely come with it.

Adding social media with a custom connector

Scrollhound is a custom connector that reads Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Hacker News: whole threads with their comments, video transcripts, a creator’s recent posts, subreddit rules and search. It only reads. It never posts, likes or follows, and it doesn’t need your social logins.

1. In Claude, open Customize → Connectors, click + Add, then Add custom connector.
2. Name it Scrollhound, paste https://api.scrollhound.com/mcp, and click Add.
3. Sign in with your email and the one-time code.
4. In a chat, click +, choose Connectors and turn Scrollhound on.

The full setup guide covers ChatGPT and Team plans too.

What it looks like

On 27 October 2026 we asked for the week’s top posts in r/socialmedia. Among the ten that came back, each with its link:

• “My client was paying for 20 hours and using 9. I almost lost them by saying nothing.” (75 points)
• “Is posting every day really necessary to grow on Instagram?” (40 comments)
• “Looking for the easiest AI agents for social media management setup.” (29 comments)

From there, “read the Instagram one with its comments and list the advice people agree on” gets you the thread in full, quotes and links included. The recipes have ready prompts for jobs like this.