Google Drive MCP Server

The Workspace power-editing MCP — formula-aware Sheets, full Slides editing, shared-drive audits the read-only Claude.ai connector deliberately won't ship.

98 tools across Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, GWS admin, and aggregations. Service Account + Domain-Wide Delegation for org-scale automation. GWS-aware capability detection — features auto-unlock for Workspace accounts.

What it does that others don't

• Deep Sheets editing — charts, conditional formats, protected ranges, named ranges, data validation, borders, merge, sort, find/replace, formulas, A1-quote-doubling for CJK tab names. The 1st-party Workspace connector reads Sheets as CSV — formulas don't survive.
• Full Slides editing — presentations, slides, shapes, tables, images, formatting. Not in the connector at all.
• Shared-Drive admin tooling — list-shared-drives, get-shared-drive, create-shared-drive, list/share/remove permissions, file activity, labels, approvals. Workspace governance surface the connector deliberately doesn't expose.
• 3 auth modes — OAuth2 (personal or GWS), Service Account + Domain-Wide Delegation (org-scale), Application Default Credentials (auto-detected).
• Aggregation tools — audit-shared-drive-permissions (single Shared-Drive audit) + audit-external-shares (cross-drive / My-Drive audit with top external-domain concentration view), summarize-spreadsheet (metadata + per-tab sample + named ranges), summarize-doc (file + content + permissions + comments).
• MCP Prompts (3) — cleanup-shared-with-me, analyze-doc-structure, bulk-format-spreadsheet.
• GWS-aware — capabilities.ts detects account type on startup; GWS-only tools return clear errors for personal accounts instead of mysterious 403s.

Try this — 5 prompts

Connect the server to Claude Desktop or Claude Code, then paste any of these:

1. Shared-drive permission audit — "Audit external shares across all my Shared Drives. List people outside us-all.co.kr who have access to anything. Group by drive, sort by access level."
2. Bulk conditional formatting — "Apply this conditional format to column amount across every sales-* spreadsheet in my drive: red if <0, yellow if 0–100, green if >100."
3. Slides from Doc outline — "Convert this Google Doc's outline into a 12-slide presentation: title slide, then 1 slide per H2 with H3 bullet points, end with a Q&A slide. Use the company template."
4. Doc structure analysis — "Analyze this Doc's structure: heading hierarchy, internal vs external link health, image alt-text coverage. Suggest 3 concrete improvements."
5. Cleanup shared-with-me — "Find files shared with me more than 180 days ago that I never opened. List them with sharer, last modified, and a guess at whether to keep."

When to use this vs alternatives

Use the 1st-party connector for zero-config Drive read flows in Claude.ai. Use taylorwilsdon if you need the full Workspace surface (Gmail / Calendar / Forms etc.). Use this server for Drive + Docs + Sheets + Slides power-editing, shared-drive governance, and bulk operations the connector can't do.

Install

Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-drive": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@us-all/google-drive-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID": "<your-client-id>",
        "GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET": "<your-client-secret>",
        "GOOGLE_REFRESH_TOKEN": "<your-refresh-token>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add google-drive -s user -- npx -y @us-all/google-drive-mcp

(Set env vars separately or in .mcp.json.)

Docker

docker run --rm -i --env-file .env ghcr.io/us-all/google-drive-mcp-server

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/us-all/google-drive-mcp-server.git
cd google-drive-mcp-server && pnpm install && pnpm build
node dist/index.js

Auth setup

OAuth2 (personal or GWS)

1. Google Cloud Console → create project
2. Enable Drive API, Docs API, Sheets API, Slides API, Drive Activity API, Drive Labels API
3. Create OAuth2 credentials (Desktop App)
4. Get a refresh token (OAuth2 playground or your own flow)
5. Set GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID, GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET, GOOGLE_REFRESH_TOKEN

Service Account + Domain-Wide Delegation (org-scale)

1. Create a Service Account in Google Cloud Console
2. Download the JSON key
3. Workspace Admin Console → Security → API Controls → Domain-Wide Delegation → add the SA's Client ID + grant required scopes
4. Set GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY_PATH and GOOGLE_IMPERSONATE_USER

Application Default Credentials (zero-config)

gcloud auth application-default login --client-id-file=client_secret.json --scopes=... — auto-detected on startup. Windows ADC paths (%APPDATA%\gcloud\) supported.

Configuration

Categories (7): drive, sheets, docs, slides, shared-drives, labels, approvals. Plus always-on meta.

When MCP_TRANSPORT=http: POST /mcp (Bearer-auth JSON-RPC) + GET /health (public liveness).

Token efficiency

extractFields projection on list-files/get-file/sheets-get-spreadsheet/docs-get-document (with tabsCount, rowCount, columnCount, locale, timeZone defaults). list-files slim default trims ~80% (drops capabilities 40-bool object + contentRestrictions).

GWS detection

capabilities.ts detects account type at startup via about.get() + domain check:

GWS-only tools throw GWSFeatureError with a clear message for personal accounts — no mysterious 403s.

MCP Prompts (4)

Workflow templates available via MCP prompts/list:

• audit-shared-drive-permissions — fleet-wide external-share audit; flag access-level outliers.
• cleanup-shared-with-me — find untouched stale shares + suggest cleanup.
• analyze-doc-structure — heading hierarchy + link health + alt-text coverage.
• bulk-format-spreadsheet — apply consistent format across many sheets/tabs.

MCP Resources

URI-based read-only access:

• gdrive://file/{fileId}
• gdrive://spreadsheet/{spreadsheetId}
• gdrive://document/{documentId}
• gdrive://presentation/{presentationId}
• gdrive://folder/{folderId}
• gdrive://shared-drive/{driveId} (GWS-gated)
• gdrive://about/me

Tools (98)

7 categories. Use search-tools to discover at runtime; full list collapsed below.

Drive (24)

get-about, list-files, get-file, read-file, create-file, update-file, copy-file, delete-file, search-files, create-folder, move-file, get-folder-tree, list-permissions, share-file, remove-permission, export-file, get-download-link, list-comments, get-comment, create-comment, resolve-comment, list-revisions, get-revision, get-activity

Google Docs (13)

Document: docs-get-document, docs-create-document, docs-get-content, docs-list-tabs Editing: docs-insert-text, docs-delete-range, docs-replace-text, docs-batch-update Formatting: docs-format-text, docs-format-paragraph Elements: docs-insert-table, docs-insert-image, docs-insert-page-break

Google Sheets (30)

Data: sheets-get-spreadsheet, sheets-get-values, sheets-batch-get-values, sheets-update-values, sheets-batch-update-values, sheets-append-values, sheets-clear-values, sheets-batch-clear-values, sheets-create-spreadsheet, sheets-manage-sheets Structure: sheets-insert-dimension, sheets-delete-dimension, sheets-duplicate-sheet, sheets-copy-sheet-to, sheets-copy-paste, sheets-sort-range, sheets-find-replace Formatting: sheets-format-cells, sheets-update-borders, sheets-merge-cells, sheets-unmerge-cells, sheets-auto-resize, sheets-resize-dimensions Advanced: sheets-set-data-validation, sheets-add-conditional-format, sheets-add-chart, sheets-delete-chart, sheets-add-protected-range, sheets-delete-protected-range, sheets-manage-named-range

Google Slides (20)

Presentation: slides-get-presentation, slides-create-presentation, slides-duplicate-presentation Slide management: slides-get-slide, slides-add-slide, slides-delete-slide, slides-move-slide, slides-duplicate-slide Content: slides-insert-text, slides-replace-text, slides-insert-text-box, slides-insert-image, slides-insert-table, slides-update-table-cell, slides-insert-shape Formatting: slides-format-text, slides-format-shape, slides-resize-element, slides-set-slide-background, slides-batch-update

GWS-only (9)

list-shared-drives, get-shared-drive, create-shared-drive, audit-shared-drive-permissions, list-file-labels, apply-label, remove-label, list-approvals, get-approval

Aggregations

summarize-spreadsheet, summarize-doc, audit-external-shares

audit-external-shares complements the GWS-only audit-shared-drive-permissions: it runs across all corpora the caller can see (or just My Drive on personal accounts) and adds a top-external-domains concentration view.

Meta

search-tools — query other tools by keyword; always enabled.

Architecture

Claude → MCP stdio → src/index.ts
                      ├── config.ts (OAuth2 / SA / ADC)
                      ├── capabilities.ts (Personal vs GWS detect)
                      ├── client.ts (Google API auth)
                      └── tools/{files,search,folders,permissions,export,comments,revisions,
                                  about,activity,docs,sheets,slides,shared-drives,labels,approvals,
                                  aggregations}.ts
                                       ↓
                              Drive API v3 / Docs API v1 / Sheets API v4 /
                              Slides API v1 / Drive Activity API v2 / Drive Labels API v2

Built on @us-all/mcp-toolkit:

• extractFields — token-efficient response projections
• aggregate(fetchers, caveats) — fan-out helper for summarize-doc
• createWrapToolHandler — Google query-string key=... redaction + WriteBlockedError / GWSFeatureError passthrough + Google API error extraction
• search-tools meta-tool

supportsAllDrives: true is passed to every Drive API call so Shared Drives just work.

Tech stack

Node.js 22+ • TypeScript strict ESM • pnpm • @modelcontextprotocol/sdk • googleapis (Drive v3 / Docs v1 / Sheets v4 / Slides v1 / Activity v2 / Labels v2) • zod • dotenv • vitest.

Limitations

• Approvals API — googleapis SDK has no typed bindings; uses raw fetch with auth header extraction.
• search-files — auto-wraps plain text in fullText contains '...'; pass Drive query syntax directly for advanced searches.

License

MIT