google-drive

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

Read, export, upload, rename, move and delete Google Drive files explicitly selected or shared with the app via the Drive v3 REST API. Use when the user provides a Drive file ID/link or has selected files for the Google Drive connector.

15installs

Sourceacedatacloud/skills

Added on2026-07-04

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add acedatacloud/skills google-drive

SKILL.md Content

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Drive Google Drive via

curl + jq

. The user's OAuth bearer token is in

$GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN

; every call needs it as

Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN

. The token carries

drive.file

plus identity scopes (

openid email profile

) and can only access files the user selected, opened, created, or shared with this app.

The Drive API returns standard JSON; failures surface as

{"error": {"code": 401|403|..., "message": "..."}}

— show that error verbatim to the user.

means the token expired and the user must re-install the connector.

403 insufficientPermissions

means the file was not shared with this app, or the action needs a broader Drive scope that is temporarily disabled during Google review.

Do not use this skill for broad Drive discovery: no "list my recent files", full-text search across Drive, shared-with-me scans, root-folder cleanup, or bulk moves based on a Drive-wide query. Ask the user to pick or paste the exact file/folder IDs first.

Before any destructive write (renaming, moving, trashing, or bulk-mutating files) show the exact target list and ask the user to confirm. Never trash by guessing an id — always echo back the file name + path you're about to touch.

Always start with
/about?fields=user
to confirm the connection works AND learn which Google account you're operating against.

Optional: Google Workspace CLI (

gws

) for uploads

gws

is Google's official CLI (not officially supported — community-maintained on the

googleworkspace

org). It dynamically builds its command surface from Google's Discovery Document, exits non-zero on API errors, supports

--page-all

auto-pagination, and ships a

+upload

helper that wraps the multipart upload protocol.

Use
gws
for uploads. A Drive multipart upload requires a hand-formatted

multipart/related

body with a JSON metadata part and a binary file part separated by a boundary string — easy to get wrong from curl.

gws drive +upload

does it correctly. For everything else (get, export, rename, move, trash, delete) the curl recipes below are equivalent and shorter — stay on those.

Install

npm install -g @googleworkspace/cli   # or: brew install googleworkspace-cli
# Pre-built binaries also at https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/releases
gws --version

Auth

gws

reads its OAuth bearer token from the

GOOGLE_WORKSPACE_CLI_TOKEN

environment variable. The Drive token used in this skill is in

$GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN

, so re-export it once at the top of every shell block that calls

gws

export GOOGLE_WORKSPACE_CLI_TOKEN="$GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN"

Upload

# Simple upload to My Drive (auto-detects MIME type, sets the file name
# from --name; falls back to the local filename if --name is omitted)
gws drive +upload ./report.pdf --name "Q1 Report"

# Upload into a specific folder, or with explicit metadata, via the
# generic Discovery method + --upload (multipart wire format handled
# for you)
gws drive files create \
  --json '{"name":"report.pdf","parents":["FOLDER_ID"],"description":"Q1"}' \
  --upload ./report.pdf

Both exit non-zero with a structured JSON error on stderr if Google rejects the request — surface that verbatim.

Recipes

Verify auth (always run first)

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/about?fields=user(displayName,emailAddress,photoLink),storageQuota(usage,limit)" \
  | jq '{user, quota: .storageQuota}'

List children of a selected folder

Only use this after the user explicitly selected or provided the folder ID.

FOLDER_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  --get "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files" \
  --data-urlencode "q='$FOLDER_ID' in parents and trashed = false" \
  --data-urlencode 'fields=files(id,name,mimeType,size,modifiedTime),nextPageToken' \
  | jq '.files'

Get metadata for a single file

FILE_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID?fields=id,name,mimeType,size,modifiedTime,parents,owners,webViewLink,description"

Download a binary file (PDF / image / zip / …)

FILE_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
OUT=/tmp/download.bin
curl -sS -L -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID?alt=media" \
  -o "$OUT"
file "$OUT" && wc -c "$OUT"

Read a Google Doc as plain markdown / text

Google-native files (Docs, Sheets, Slides) don't have raw bytes — you have to ask Drive to export them to a concrete MIME type:

DOC_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'

# Markdown (best for chat-friendly summaries)
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$DOC_ID/export?mimeType=text/markdown" \
  > /tmp/doc.md
head -40 /tmp/doc.md

# Plain text fallback for older docs
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$DOC_ID/export?mimeType=text/plain" \
  > /tmp/doc.txt

Common export MIME types:

native MIME export to

native MIME	export to
`application/vnd.google-apps.document`	`text/markdown` , `text/plain` , `text/html` , `application/pdf` , `application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document`
`application/vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet`	`text/csv` , `application/pdf` , `application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet`
`application/vnd.google-apps.presentation`	`application/pdf` , `text/plain` , `application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation`

application/vnd.google-apps.document

text/markdown

text/plain

text/html

application/pdf

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document

application/vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet

text/csv

application/pdf

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet

application/vnd.google-apps.presentation

application/pdf

text/plain

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation

Read a Google Sheet as CSV

SHEET_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$SHEET_ID/export?mimeType=text/csv" \
  > /tmp/sheet.csv
head /tmp/sheet.csv

The Drive

export

endpoint returns the first sheet only. For multi-tab access the user needs to install a separate Google Sheets connector (currently out of catalog) — explain that and stop.

Get permissions / sharing on a file

FILE_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID/permissions?fields=permissions(id,type,role,emailAddress,domain,deleted)" \
  | jq '.permissions[] | {who: (.emailAddress // .domain // .type), role}'

Write recipes

These only work for files and folders available through

drive.file

. If Google returns

403 insufficientPermissions

, surface the error and ask the user to select/share the target file with the app. Always echo the target name + path back to the user before trashing or bulk-moving anything.

Rename a file

FILE_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
NEW_NAME='2026 Q2 OKR (final).gdoc'
curl -sS -X PATCH -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data "{\"name\":$(jq -nr --arg n "$NEW_NAME" '$n')}" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID?fields=id,name"

Move a file to a different folder

Drive's folder model is parent-id based. Move = remove old parent, add new parent:

FILE_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
NEW_PARENT='1XYZnewFolderId'

# Read existing parents (so we can pass them in removeParents)
OLD_PARENTS=$(curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID?fields=parents" \
  | jq -r '.parents | join(",")')

curl -sS -X PATCH -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  --data '' \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID?addParents=$NEW_PARENT&removeParents=$OLD_PARENTS&fields=id,name,parents"

Create a new folder

PARENT_ID='1XYZparentFolderId'  # or 'root' for My Drive root
curl -sS -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data "{\"name\":\"Reports / 2026Q2\",\"mimeType\":\"application/vnd.google-apps.folder\",\"parents\":[\"$PARENT_ID\"]}" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files?fields=id,name,webViewLink" \
  | jq

Upload a file (multipart so metadata + bytes go in one request)

LOCAL=/tmp/report.pdf
NAME='Q2 report.pdf'
PARENT_ID='1XYZparentFolderId'
MIME='application/pdf'

BOUNDARY='aceDataBoundary'
META=$(jq -nc --arg n "$NAME" --arg p "$PARENT_ID" '{name:$n, parents:[$p]}')
{
  printf -- '--%s\r\n' "$BOUNDARY"
  printf 'Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8\r\n\r\n'
  printf '%s\r\n' "$META"
  printf -- '--%s\r\n' "$BOUNDARY"
  printf 'Content-Type: %s\r\n\r\n' "$MIME"
  cat "$LOCAL"
  printf '\r\n--%s--\r\n' "$BOUNDARY"
} > /tmp/_drive_upload.bin

curl -sS -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=$BOUNDARY" \
  --data-binary @/tmp/_drive_upload.bin \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/upload/drive/v3/files?uploadType=multipart&fields=id,name,webViewLink" \
  | jq

For a media-only upload (no metadata) use

uploadType=media

; for files >5 MB use

uploadType=resumable

(covered in [Drive's docs] (https://developers.google.com/drive/api/guides/manage-uploads#resumable)).

Replace the contents of an existing file

FILE_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
LOCAL=/tmp/report-v2.pdf
curl -sS -X PATCH -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/pdf' \
  --data-binary @"$LOCAL" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/upload/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID?uploadType=media&fields=id,name,modifiedTime"

Metadata stays the same (id / parents / name) — only the bytes are replaced and Drive bumps

modifiedTime

Trash a file (or restore one)

FILE_ID='1A2B3CdEfGhIjKlMn'
curl -sS -X PATCH -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"trashed":true}' \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID?fields=id,name,trashed"

# Restore:
curl -sS -X PATCH -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"trashed":false}' \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/$FILE_ID?fields=id,name,trashed"

Prefer

trashed:true

over

DELETE

—

DELETE

is permanent and the user can't undo it. Only use

DELETE

when they explicitly say "permanently delete".

Common error codes

HTTP	meaning	what to tell the user
`401 UNAUTHENTICATED`	token expired / revoked	"Reconnect the Google Drive connector on the Connections page."
`403 insufficientPermissions`	target not shared with app / broader Drive scope disabled	"This file isn't available to the app under the current `drive.file` permission. Select or share the exact file with the Google Drive connector, then try again."
`403 userRateLimitExceeded`	quota	retry once after 5–10s; if it persists, tell the user.
`404 notFound`	wrong file id OR file isn't visible to this app	double-check the id; ask the user to select or share the file with the connector.
`400 invalidQuery`	malformed `q`	print the `q` you sent + the error message back to the user.

Never log or echo

$GOOGLE_DRIVE_TOKEN

— treat it as a secret.

google-drive

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content

Optional: Google Workspace CLI (
`gws`
) for uploads

Install

Auth

Upload

Recipes

Verify auth (always run first)

List children of a selected folder

Get metadata for a single file

Download a binary file (PDF / image / zip / …)

Read a Google Doc as plain markdown / text

Read a Google Sheet as CSV

Get permissions / sharing on a file

Write recipes

Rename a file

Move a file to a different folder

Create a new folder

Upload a file (multipart so metadata + bytes go in one request)

Replace the contents of an existing file

Trash a file (or restore one)

Common error codes

google-drive

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content

Optional: Google Workspace CLI (gws) for uploads

Install

Auth

Upload

Recipes

Verify auth (always run first)

List children of a selected folder

Get metadata for a single file

Download a binary file (PDF / image / zip / …)

Read a Google Doc as plain markdown / text

Read a Google Sheet as CSV

Get permissions / sharing on a file

Write recipes

Rename a file

Move a file to a different folder

Create a new folder

Upload a file (multipart so metadata + bytes go in one request)

Replace the contents of an existing file

Trash a file (or restore one)

Common error codes

Optional: Google Workspace CLI (
`gws`
) for uploads