Week 12 — Practice Exercises · Claude Cowork II: Skills, Connectors & Artifacts

Course: Using Artificial Intelligence (AI 101) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Quinn
Covers: skill vs. connector vs. artifact vs. plugin · MCP basics · least-privilege · built-in skills · live artifacts
Format: 5 ungraded exercises · do them in any approved AI assistant or on paper · low-stakes, no submission required · answers come after honest attempts

How to use this. Work each exercise before reading the note below it. A wrong guess is useful — it tells you which idea to re-read in the lecture outline or the official docs. The notes here never give away the answer outright; they send you back to the concept.

Exercise 1 — Match the Term to the Plain-Language Description

For each description below, decide: is it describing a (A) skill, (B) connector, (C) live artifact, or (D) plugin?

If-incorrect note: if you matched 1a or 1e to "connector," re-read the Segment 2 misconception cure in the lecture outline — a skill is local (an instruction file); a connector links to an external app. If you matched 1d to "skill," re-read the plugin definition: a plugin bundles multiple components, including skills AND connectors.

Exercise 2 — Scenario: What Would You Use?

Read each scenario and choose the best feature to use: skill, connector, artifact, or plugin. Then write one sentence explaining why.

2a. You need to generate a well-formatted Word document from a project outline every week. You don't need to pull data from any external app — just format the output correctly.

2b. Your team wants Claude to be able to read and label incoming GitHub issues so you can triage them without switching tools.

2c. You want a persistent view — always up to date — of your top 10 Linear tickets, refreshing from your project management tool each time you open it.

2d. Your company's IT team wants to give every employee instant access to an AI set up for HR questions, pre-wired with the company knowledge base and the Slack connector — in a single install.

If-incorrect note: for 2a, the key phrase is "don't need to pull data from any external app" — that points to a skill (instruction set), not a connector. For 2c, the phrase "always up to date, refreshing automatically" is the signature of a live artifact. If you chose "skill" for 2c, re-read Segment 5.

Exercise 3 — True, False, or "It Depends" — MCP & Permissions

For each claim, decide: True / False / It depends (and briefly say what it depends on).

3a. "MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a proprietary Anthropic technology that only Claude can use."

3b. "Once I connect the Gmail connector, Claude can automatically also access my Google Drive files."

3c. "A connector inherits the same permissions I have in the connected service — not more."

3d. "A live artifact can use any connector I have set up, whenever it decides it needs new data."

3e. "Custom skills require writing code."

If-incorrect note: for 3a, the brief states "MCP is an open standard created by Anthropic" — open standard means other AI systems can use it too. For 3b, re-read the least-privilege principle — each connector's permissions are scoped separately; Gmail doesn't automatically grant Drive access. For 3d, re-read the live-artifact limit in Segment 5: a live artifact can only use connectors approved when it was created or updated.

Exercise 4 — "What's Wrong With This AI Answer?" (AI-Critique Practice)

Read the following AI-generated explanation. Identify at least two things that are incorrect or misleading, based on what you've learned this week.

AI's explanation (to evaluate, not to trust):
"In Claude Cowork, a skill and a connector work the same way — both pull data from external apps into your project. The difference is just that skills are built-in and connectors are custom. There are exactly 47 connectors available in the directory right now. When you build a live artifact, it automatically gains access to all the connectors you've ever set up in Cowork, so your dashboard is always fully synchronized. Plugins are basically just very long skill files."

Identify the errors. Write a corrected version of any two claims.

If-incorrect note: this exercise is designed to be hard to answer perfectly if you haven't read the official docs. If you're not sure what's wrong, the first error is in the very first sentence — re-read the Segment 2 vs. Segment 3 comparison. The "exactly 47 connectors" error is about quote-count caution (Segment 3 note). The live-artifact claim is addressed in Segment 5. The plugin claim is addressed in Segment 6.

Exercise 5 — Design a Least-Privilege Setup

You are a graduate student writing your thesis. You want to use Claude Cowork to help you:
- Draft and format chapter sections as Word documents.
- Track your supervisor's feedback comments from your shared Google Drive folder.
- Keep an always-updated list of the papers you've flagged in your citation manager (Zotero).

List the specific features (skill, connector, artifact) you would use for each task, and for any connector, list only the minimum permissions you would grant.

If-incorrect note: for the first task, the built-in docx skill is sufficient — no external data needed, so no connector. For the Drive task, the minimum is read access to the specific shared folder only — not all of Drive, not your personal files, not Gmail. If you granted "full Google account access," that violates least-privilege thinking.