Which Connectors Does an AI Agent Need?
There are over 300 connectors that you can use inside of Gumloop. Take your time and go through those.
Connectors are what make agents work. This is what helps them to move from one part of a workflow to the next part.
Why an AI agent needs connectors
What that means is that if it's going to be able to decide, Hey, I need to check calendar. I need to check email and create an agenda for this meeting or send a follow-up recap, then it needs to have access to systems.
Hear this at 26:39 in the recording.
Exa, the search engine built for AI agents
I want to highlight for you three helpful connectors that are beyond calendar and email.
The first one is called Exa. E-X-A, if you're unfamiliar with this company, just put a note for yourself to go to their website later today, or even have your agent to go to the site for you. Exa is similar to Google, but it's built for agents. Okay. It is built for agents. So it means that as agents are searching the web and fetching information, searching the internet and reading web pages that search and fetch, it is built natively for agents to be able to pull the information that humans are looking for. So Exa works as a great connector and plug-in to turbocharge what you have your agents doing.
Hear this at 27:10 in the recording.
Apify, for public LinkedIn pages
The next one that I like to use is Apify, A-P-I-F-Y. Again, if you're unfamiliar with this tool, please bookmark it and check it out later.
There are a couple of websites that don't have connectors. One of them being one of my favorite tools, LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn't share the MCP and API. I'm getting a little technical here, but that's simply how one system talks to another. LinkedIn doesn't readily share that information.
How then do we find publicly available information if our chief of staff agent is helping us prep for a meeting and looking at a company LinkedIn page or the person you're meeting with looking at their public page? Apify is an agent native tool that fetches specific information from various platforms such as LinkedIn. Now Apify looks at other websites, but I found it to be one of the best if you're prepping and you're using LinkedIn to prepare for a meeting, Apify is one of the best tools for that because they have written a protocol for agents to be able to look at public pages.
Hear this at 28:05 in the recording.
Firecrawl, and meeting prep with a chief of staff AI agent
The next tool that I want to share with you that I really like for agents is Firecrawl. You may start noticing a pattern emerge here. I love to give my agents access to agentic native tools. So Firecrawl, similar to Exa and Apify, it is a system built to help agents to be able to process information on the web. So similar to how I would go to Google and search for information, my agent would first go to Firecrawl and to be able to go through websites and pull information on my behalf.
I typically have my chief of staff agent reviewing my calendar and helping me to decide which meetings I need to spend more time prepping for and which meetings I need to have follow-up actions on. If I'm meeting with an organization, have they been in the press recently? Have they shared a press release? Is there anything they're celebrating? I use my agent's superpower tools, these connectors, to help me prep for that.
Hear this at 29:24 in the recording.
Add the systems you already use
I'm going to give my agent access to ones I've already given it access to before, such as my Google Drive, Sheets, Gmail, as well as a calendar, okay? That would help my agent to be able to get work done for me.
Hear this at 31:04 in the recording.
Where this comes from
Every sentence above is Jacqueline V. Twillie's own, spoken live with Women Applying AI on October 7, 2026. The headings, questions, timestamps and links are the only additions. Filler words are cut, and a passage that skips a few seconds starts at the timestamp shown.
Build Your First AI Agent in One Hour: the full build, with the clips, the prompts and the transcript. This article's clip is Exa, Apify and Firecrawl: the research tools built for AI agents.
Related reading: What Is an AI Agent Connector?, What Is an AI Agent-Native Tool?, What Is MCP, in Nontechnical Words?.
Frequently asked questions
Do you work for Gumloop?
I don't work for Gumloop. I found this tool over the summer through Lenny's podcast, and I started using it and have since made myself an ambassador for them. I've created a relationship with Gumloop.
What happens if I change my password?
It's also important for me to note here, if you change your password in any system that you've given your Gumloop access to, your Gumloop will no longer be able to access that system. So you would have to come back into Gumloop and reauthorize that permission for it to continue to work.
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