Set-up documentation

Does Claude Cowork work with your email?

Yes. Claude Cowork works with your own Gmail, Outlook.com, Microsoft 365, iCloud or IMAP mailbox once Mailbox MCP is added as a connector. Cowork hasn't got a connector screen of its own. It uses the connectors on your Claude account, and you switch them on for each task.

We tested that on 6 October 2026 in a Claude Max account, with only our demo mailbox switched on. In one Cowork task Claude read the newest email, saved a threaded draft reply and sent a new message. The draft stayed in Drafts unsent, and the sent message had its copy filed in Sent, exactly as if it had been written in the mail client.

Anthropic's help centre says the same connector covers every Claude app:

Custom connectors using remote MCP are available on Claude, Cowork, and Claude Desktop for users on Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans. Free users are limited to one custom connector.

Anthropic, Get started with custom connectors using remote MCP

So there's nothing Cowork-specific to install. Add the mailbox once and it's there in a chat, in a Cowork task, on the desktop app and on your phone. The one Free-plan catch is that limit of one custom connector, which is one mailbox. Cowork itself needs a paid Claude plan.

Cowork and chat are now one Claude

If you're looking for a separate Cowork screen and can't find one, that's expected. On 16 September 2026 Anthropic announced that "Claude Cowork and chat are merging into one Claude", rolling out by account, with Pro and Max first. In the new layout you just describe the task in the ordinary message box.

We saw both layouts on the same account in one day. On the morning of 6 October the switch at the top of Claude's menu read "Chat and Cowork"; that afternoon it read "Claude". The connectors were the same in both, and Anthropic says they move across with you: "your chats, projects, artifacts, connectors, and skills."

Anthropic's test for which one you have: if your message box still shows separate "Chat" and "Cowork" options, you haven't moved yet. The steps below work in both.

Add your mailbox to Claude Cowork

1. Connect the mailbox in the control panel

   Claude can't reach a mailbox we don't hold, so this comes first. It's also the only step where a Claude Cowork Gmail set-up differs from Outlook or IMAP. Follow the page for your provider: Gmail, Outlook.com and Hotmail, Microsoft 365, iCloud Mail or any IMAP mailbox. Then copy the URL from the mailbox's Connector tab.

2. Add it in Claude under Customize, then Connectors

   Choose Customize, then Connectors, press + Add and choose Add custom connector. Name it after the mailbox, paste the URL and press Continue, then Add. There's no client ID to find. The Claude.ai page has every screen.

   Connector URL One per mailbox, from its Connector tab

   https://mcp.mailbox-mcp.com/db/mcp/YOUR-MAILBOX-KEY

   On a Team or Enterprise plan, Anthropic says an owner adds the connector first, in Organization settings, then Connectors. You then find it under Customize, Connectors and press Connect.

3. Press Connect and choose the mailbox

   Add saves the connector but doesn't sign it in. On its page press Connect, sign in to the control panel and pick the mailbox this connector opens. While you're there, set its tools to Always allow if you don't want Claude stopping to ask before each step.

4. Switch it on for the task

   In the message box press +, open Connectors and switch the mailbox on. Anthropic puts it plainly: "you control which connectors Claude can use via the '+' menu in the chat box or the Customize > Connectors page." Switch on only the mailboxes the task needs.

   

A real Cowork email task, recorded

Here's what a Cowork email task looks like with Mailbox MCP. We asked for a catch-up on the demo mailbox, with no tools named, and told Claude not to change anything:

Look at the 3 steps Claude took. It didn't page through the inbox one message at a time. It called Catch up on new mail, Find mail you owe a reply and Find mail waiting on a reply, 3 tools we built for exactly this job, and had its answer from those 3 calls.

The answer was the kind you'd want on a Monday. One marketing email had arrived. Tom at a letting agent needed a lease decision by Friday, and a rota approval was overdue. 2 of our own emails had gone unanswered for 9 and 11 days. It also set aside an invoice and a "samples posted" note as needing no reply, which is the judgement we'd have made.

Those tools are the same ones behind our ready-made routines, so a Cowork task can do in a few calls what would otherwise take dozens of searches. They're listed with the rest in the tool reference.

Cowork permission mode for email: Manual or Auto

Next to the model name in the message box there's a menu headed Permission mode. It decides whether Claude stops to ask before it uses a tool, and for email that's the difference between approving every step and handing the task over.

Our runs were in Manual and nothing stopped to ask, because the connector's tools were already set to Always allow on its page. That per-connector setting is the one to change if the prompts get in the way. Stop Claude asking before every step shows where it is.

On Team and Enterprise plans an administrator can make approval stricter, and one sentence in Anthropic's Cowork guide for those plans decides how much of that lands on a mail connector:

Read-only tools are exempt only when the connector annotates them as read-only. Most custom connectors don't annotate their tools, so every tool on those connectors is gated.

Anthropic, Use Claude Cowork on Team and Enterprise plans

Mailbox MCP labels each of its tools as read-only or not. Claude shows that itself: a connector's Tool permissions page sorts ours under Read-only tools, from Catch up on new mail onwards. So under that policy a catch-up, a search or a read goes straight through, and only the steps that change mail, such as a send, a move or a delete, wait for a person.

Scheduled Cowork tasks for your inbox

Cowork can run a task on a schedule, and Anthropic names email as one of the obvious uses: "Daily briefings: Summarize Slack messages, emails, or calendar events from the past 24 hours." It also says scheduled tasks get "connected tools", so a morning catch-up on your mailbox is the task above, set to run itself.

Anthropic draws one line we agree with. Its safety guide says:

Don't schedule tasks that access sensitive files, send messages on your behalf, make purchases, or take other actions that are difficult to undo.

Anthropic, Use Claude Cowork safely

That's a good rule for mail. A scheduled run that reads and reports is safe to leave alone; one that sends is a message in your name with nobody watching. Our routines follow the same shape: they find, sort and draft, and a person presses send. The routines set-up page has the prompts ready to schedule.

What Mailbox MCP in Cowork doesn't do

• The free tier is small for Cowork. It's 5 tool calls a day per mailbox. Our catch-up used 3; a 29-message clean-up we recorded the same morning used 7. Pro is 1,000 a day per mailbox.
• One connector opens one mailbox. 2 mailboxes are 2 connectors, each with its own URL, and you switch on the ones a task needs.
• It can't open files on your computer itself. A file there reaches an email through an upload link we make: you drop it on, or Claude uploads it where its environment has a network. Files on the web or already in your mailbox attach directly.
• It doesn't send on a timer by itself. There's no send-later in the mailbox; a scheduled Cowork task is what runs on time, and Anthropic advises against scheduled sends.

If Cowork can't see your mailbox

• Symptom

  Claude says it has no email tools

  The connector is added but switched off for this task. Press +, open Connectors and switch it on. Each new task starts from the switches as you last left them.

• Symptom

  The connector isn't in the Connectors list at all

  On Team and Enterprise plans it has to be added by an owner in Organization settings first. On Pro and Max, check you're signed in to the same Claude account you added it to.

• Symptom

  Claude used the wrong mailbox

  More than one mail connector was switched on and the task didn't say which. Name the mailbox in the task, as we did with "Using my Mailbox MCP Demo mailbox", or switch the others off.

• Symptom

  Every tool call fails after a password change

  The mail server stopped accepting the credential we hold. Update it in the control panel; the connector URL stays the same, so nothing in Claude needs touching.

Claude Cowork email questions

Does Claude Cowork send emails?

Yes, once your mailbox is connected. On 6 October 2026 we asked Claude, in a Cowork task with only our demo mailbox switched on, to read the newest email, save a draft reply and send a new message. All 3 worked in one run: the draft sat in Drafts unsent, and the new message went out from the mailbox's own address with a copy filed in Sent. In Manual mode Claude asks before it acts; you can set a connector's tools to Always allow.

Does Claude Cowork work with Outlook email?

Yes. For Claude Cowork Outlook email, Mailbox MCP connects Outlook.com and Hotmail addresses as well as Microsoft 365 work mailboxes, and Cowork uses it like any other connector. That matters for personal accounts, because Anthropic's own Microsoft 365 connector says "Personal Microsoft accounts (such as @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, or @live.com) can't be used." Connect the mailbox in our control panel, add the connector in Claude, and switch it on for the task.

Can Claude Cowork use my Gmail account?

Yes. You connect your Gmail mailbox in the Mailbox MCP control panel with a Google app password, then add its connector URL in Claude under Customize, Connectors. Cowork then reads, searches, drafts, files and sends in that Gmail account, and the mail looks normal in Gmail afterwards: a sent message has its Sent copy and a deleted one goes to Bin.

Does Claude Cowork work with IMAP or iCloud Mail?

Yes. Claude Cowork IMAP access works for any mailbox that speaks IMAP and SMTP, including iCloud Mail and the mail that comes with your own domain. The control panel finds the server settings for most providers. Cowork never talks IMAP itself: it calls our tools over a single connector URL, and we hold the IMAP connection.

Can Claude Cowork use more than one mailbox in the same task?

Yes. Each mailbox gets its own connector, named after the mailbox, and you switch on as many as the task needs from the + menu under Connectors. We ran one request across a Gmail account and a second mailbox on 6 October 2026 and got an answer for each, with nothing changed in either.

Do I need the Claude desktop app to use email in Cowork?

No. Our runs were in a web browser. Anthropic says Cowork runs on web and mobile in beta, and that a custom connector is reached "from Anthropic's cloud infrastructure, rather than from your local device" in every Claude app. So the same connector works wherever you open Claude, with nothing installed on your computer.

Which Claude plans include Cowork?

Anthropic says "Claude Cowork is available on paid plans (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise)." On Team and Enterprise an owner adds the connector for the organisation first, then each member presses Connect. Mailbox MCP has its own free tier of 5 tool calls a day per mailbox, which is enough to see Cowork answer from your mail before you pay for anything.

Can a scheduled Cowork task check my email every morning?

Yes. Anthropic lists "Daily briefings: Summarize Slack messages, emails, or calendar events from the past 24 hours" as a scheduled-task use, with "connected tools" available. Our catch-up, replies-owed and waiting-on tools give that briefing its facts in 3 calls. Anthropic advises against scheduling tasks that send messages for you, so keep scheduled runs to reading and reporting.

Next steps for email in Claude Cowork

Working across more than one inbox? Multiple email accounts in Claude covers naming and switching connectors. To hand Claude a proper tidy-up, clean up your inbox with Claude walks through a recorded run.

Personal pricing has what Pro costs per mailbox, and Claude.ai has the connector screens in full, including the Team and Enterprise route.

Read 6 October 2026 Every value on this page came off Anthropic: custom connectors using remote MCP on that day. The tasks and the screenshots are our own, run in a Claude Max account on the same day. If it has changed since, tell us and we will read it again.