What You Need to Know
A Project's knowledge is the material Claude draws on inside that Project. It arrives by one of two routes. An upload puts a copy into the Project's knowledge base: documents, text, code and other files. A connector links Claude to the live source, such as Google Drive. Each route has properties the other lacks. The choice turns on how the material changes.
Take a painter and decorator setting up a Project for quoting and job planning. Its terms and conditions and method statement barely change. The job schedule, a Google Doc in Drive, changes every week.
A Snapshot or the Live Source
An uploaded file is a copy taken on the day of upload. Every user of the Project sees the same copy, so it is stable and predictable. When the source is superseded, the copy stays as it was and nothing announces it. It looks as current in six months as on day one. That suits the terms and conditions, but not the job schedule, which would be wrong within a week.
A connector suits material that changes, because it reaches the live source when asked. The Google Workspace documentation states that Google Docs added to chats and projects sync directly from Google Drive, so you are always working with the latest version. It also states that Claude only accesses your data when you explicitly ask a question or request an action requiring it, retrieving the minimum information needed.
The latest version includes a colleague's half-finished edit at the moment of your question. If the office manager is halfway through moving Tuesday's jobs, Claude reads them half moved. Live material carries live mess, so stable reference documents are often better uploaded.
Permissions and Governance
Connectors are not a personal toggle in every workplace. On Team and Enterprise plans, an Owner or Primary Owner needs to enable connectors for the organisation before members can use them. If they are off in your workspace, the right step is a request to whoever administers it, not improvisation.
Access mirrors what each person already holds in the connected service. If someone can't reach a file in the source system, the connector can't reach it from Claude either. Two colleagues using the same Project can get different answers from the same connector. That is a property of the permission system, not a fault in the Project.
Connectors are not read-only. They can retrieve data and take actions in connected services. The Gmail connector can send, reply to and forward email from your own account. By default Claude asks for your approval before each of these actions. The decorator still approves each quote email before it goes.
Retrieval, Not Cover-to-Cover Reading
A Project with a substantial knowledge base is not read whole on every question. The documentation describes Claude searching project knowledge and loading only the most relevant content. Retrieval activates as a project approaches or exceeds the limits of its context window. Retrieval has to find the right document among everything supplied.
Two documented steps help. Clear, descriptive file names help the right material get found: "terms-and-conditions" beats "final-v2-new". You can also name a specific document in your prompt to focus the search on it.
Curation Beats Completeness
A Project's knowledge is not an archive. Every document that is never needed dilutes the search space and is a chance to be quoted at the wrong moment. A small set of relevant documents beats a bulk upload. Clean out files no longer in active use rather than leaving them in.
When handed a shared drive, pick the few documents the work needs and route each by how it changes. Living material such as the decorator's job schedule goes through a connector to its live home. Stable reference material such as the method statement goes in as uploads. A colleague who wants everything brought in means well. The cost arrives later, in answers drawn from the wrong document.
In the exam
Items test whether you match the route to the material, and the tell in almost every stem is how it changes. Whether a document is permitted in the Project at all, on privacy, contractual or policy grounds, is Domain 6's question. This objective manages material already allowed to be there.
Current state: where the Drive route is available
The exam guide names Google Drive as a connector to manage alongside uploads, and routing living material through it is the keyed judgement. As of 28 September 2026 the Google Workspace connectors article describes the Drive route as adding one document at a time, and only to a private Project's Files. You add each one by searching your recent documents or pasting its link. The article says the option is disabled for shared Projects, whose Files take uploads. The connector still works in chats: Google Docs added to a chat sync directly from Drive. On the exam, route by how the material changes.
The exam tell
Upload-versus-connector items are keyed on how the material changes, never on how important it is. The weekly job schedule goes on the connector, however trivial it looks. The terms and conditions, which barely change, are uploaded, however foundational they are.
Exam Traps
Bringing in the whole shared drive so nothing is missing
The dump reads as diligence and is the posture curation exists to correct. Retrieval must find the right document among everything supplied, so every irrelevant file makes the relevant one harder to surface and more likely to be displaced by a wrong-moment quote.
Choosing between upload and connector by how important the material is
Importance is the wrong axis. The keyed answer routes by change: frequently revised material belongs on a connector to its live source, stable reference material is uploaded once. An uploaded rota goes stale silently no matter how much the work depends on it.
Having a Team-plan user switch on an organisation connector themselves
An Owner or Primary Owner must enable connectors for the organisation before members can use them, so the keyed move is asking the workspace administrator. Options that have the candidate improvise the enablement are testing exactly this governance step.
Practice Scenario
A show cave preservation society is setting up the knowledge for a Project covering guide rotas, opening arrangements and volunteer communications. The guide rota and the opening times, which change with the water level after rain, live in a shared Drive folder; the constitution, the site risk assessments and the guide handbook barely change. A trustee suggests bringing in the entire shared drive so everything is available. Material unrelated to those three areas has no place in the Project. What is the best setup?
Build Exercise
Route a Real Project's Material by How It Changes
What you'll learn
- How to classify each document by how often it changes
- How to route living material through a connector and stable material as uploads
- How to check connector governance before relying on it
- How to test which version of a changed document the Project actually quotes
- List every document a recurring piece of your work needs, then mark each one: changes weekly or monthly, or barely changes at all
Why: The routing decision is made per document, and the change frequency is the axis the whole objective turns on.
You should see: A two-column list: living documents on one side, stable documents on the other.
- Upload the current versions of the stable set to the Project knowledge and note the date
Why: Stable material gets the properties uploads are good at: predictable, identical for everyone, and consulted without any live dependency.
You should see: The stable documents in the knowledge base with a dated note of when they were uploaded.
- For the living set, identify where the live version actually lives; if it is in Google Drive and your workplace allows the connector, add those documents from Drive rather than uploading copies
Why: A connector keeps living material current without anyone remembering to re-upload, which is the failure mode uploads cannot avoid.
You should see: The living documents reachable through the Drive connector, or a written request to your workspace administrator if the connector is not yet enabled.
- Cull ruthlessly: remove anything you listed only because it might one day be useful, and give the files that remain clear descriptive names
Why: Every never-needed document dilutes retrieval, and well-named files help the right material get found.
You should see: A shorter knowledge list where every file earns its place and its name says what it is.
- Test with a question whose answer changed recently and check which version the Project quotes
Why: The test proves the routing: connected material should answer with the current version, and a stale answer means something living got uploaded.
You should see: An answer citing the current version, or a specific file you now know to re-route.
Sources
- Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) for projects — Anthropic
- Use connectors to extend Claude's capabilities — Anthropic
- Use Google Workspace connectors — Anthropic
- How do usage and length limits work? — Anthropic
- What are projects? — Anthropic
- Claude Certified Associate – Foundations Exam Guide — Anthropic