The Cowork operating layer.

The agent's hands. Every vault read, every skill write, every plan file lives here. End-of-day vault sync (7 PM) reads what shipped today and writes back so tomorrow's instance starts smart. Process-mining scan (Monday 9 AM) writes candidate-skill files. Without filesystem, none of the other connectors compose — Slack output has nowhere to land, Gong transcripts have nowhere to cache.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
        "/Users/vlad/Vlad-Brain",
        "/Users/vlad/Desktop/AI Products"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Output channel for everything. Morning briefing (7:30 AM weekdays) lands as DM. Deal-advancement alerts (5 PM ET) post to leadership canvas. Friday wrap-up cross-system synthesis lands Saturday-morning canvas. Reads everything — channels, threads, DMs — for context. Writes go through a confirmation step, because an agent that posts to #general without a gate is one bad cron away from a Monday-morning HR conversation.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "slack": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-slack"],
      "env": {
        "SLACK_BOT_TOKEN": "xoxb-***",
        "SLACK_TEAM_ID": "T***",
        "SLACK_CHANNEL_IDS": "C0123,C0456"
      }
    }
  }
}

Inbox = highest-ROI connector after filesystem. Morning briefing pulls overnight thread context. Pre-meeting prep (30 min before each meeting) pulls last interaction with the attendees. Cross-references HubSpot contact email to build deal summaries — the inbox-CRM join is where most "what's going on with this account" questions actually get answered.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gmail": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-gmail"],
      "env": {
        "GMAIL_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID": "***.apps.googleusercontent.com",
        "GMAIL_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET": "***",
        "GMAIL_OAUTH_SCOPES": "gmail.readonly,gmail.labels"
      }
    }
  }
}

Sales pipeline ticker (9 AM weekdays) pulls overnight deal motion — what advanced, what stalled, what went dark. Deal-advancement alerts (5 PM) read stage changes since 5 PM yesterday and write one paragraph each, "why this matters," back to a leadership Slack canvas. Writes are scoped to notes and tasks — never deal-stage changes, never close-won, never amount edits.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hubspot": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@hubspot/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "HUBSPOT_ACCESS_TOKEN": "pat-na1-***",
        "HUBSPOT_ALLOWED_OPERATIONS": "deals.read,contacts.read,notes.write,tasks.write"
      }
    }
  }
}

Folderly's MRR motion, dispute trends, churn signals. "What was MRR last week" returns a real number, not a vibe. Friday wrap-up pulls week-over-week revenue delta for the Saturday-morning canvas. Read-only, full stop — billing is the one place where a hallucinated tool call has direct cash-impact downside.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stripe": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@stripe/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "STRIPE_API_KEY": "rk_live_***",
        "STRIPE_MODE": "read-only"
      }
    }
  }
}

Hourly Sentry watcher fires Codex-style auto-PRs for non-trivial bugs — reviewed like junior-engineer work, never auto-merged. Friday wrap-up pulls repo health (open PRs, stale branches, failing builds) across every codebase. Reads issues for triage context, writes commits and PR descriptions through scoped fine-grained tokens.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "github": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_TOKEN": "github_pat_***",
        "GITHUB_ALLOWED_REPOS": "Belkins/linkagent,Belkins/folderly"
      }
    }
  }
}

Half the questions an agent gets need calendar context — "when am I free Thursday," "who am I meeting with at 2," "what's on the day shape." Morning briefing pulls today + tomorrow. Pre-meeting prep (30 min before each meeting) joins the attendee list against HubSpot contacts and Gmail thread history. Read-only is enough for 95% of workflows — time-block suggestions get drafted, not booked.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gcal": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-google-calendar"],
      "env": {
        "GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID": "***.apps.googleusercontent.com",
        "GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET": "***",
        "GOOGLE_OAUTH_SCOPES": "calendar.readonly,calendar.events.readonly"
      }
    }
  }
}

Newsletter canonical store — everything else is a mirror. Vault sync (7 PM) doesn't write to Notion directly; it writes to the Obsidian vault, and Notion stays the human-curated surface. Reads page content, database queries, and comments to ground responses in the team's actual docs. For Belkins, Notion is read-only context; for the Newsletter, it's the source of truth.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notion": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@notionhq/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "NOTION_INTEGRATION_TOKEN": "ntn_***",
        "NOTION_ALLOWED_DATABASES": "db-id-1,db-id-2"
      }
    }
  }
}

Call transcript ingestion for deal summaries and follow-up drafts. Sales pipeline ticker joins Gong transcripts to HubSpot deal state — "deal advanced, here's the moment in the call that moved it." Pre-meeting prep pulls the last call transcript with the same buyer so the next conversation doesn't repeat ground. Pick ONE transcriber — Gong, Fireflies, or Granola — not three. The agent gets confused when the same call appears in two systems with two summaries.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gong": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@gong/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "GONG_ACCESS_KEY": "***",
        "GONG_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET": "***",
        "GONG_ALLOWED_OPERATIONS": "calls.read,transcripts.read"
      }
    }
  }
}

Newsletter SEO motion. Keyword volume checks inline ("does this title have search demand"), backlink data for outreach targeting, competitor organic-keyword overlap for editorial planning. Friday wrap-up pulls week-over-week SEO movement across vladsnewsletter.com. Read-only by definition — Ahrefs doesn't expose write endpoints.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ahrefs": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@ahrefs/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "AHREFS_API_TOKEN": "***",
        "AHREFS_DEFAULT_TARGET": "vladsnewsletter.com"
      }
    }
  }
}