Google Workspace — gws CLI

Unified skill for interacting with Google Workspace services via the gws command-line tool.

CLI overview

All Google Workspace APIs share the same invocation pattern:

gws <service> <resource> [sub-resource] <method> [flags]

Common flags (available across all services):

Flag	Purpose
--params '<JSON>'	URL / query parameters
--json '<JSON>'	Request body (POST / PATCH / PUT)
--format <fmt>	Output: json (default), table, yaml, csv
--page-all	Auto-paginate (NDJSON, one JSON object per line)
--output <path>	Write binary responses to a file

Schema introspection — useful when you need to discover available fields or request shapes:

gws schema docs.documents.get
gws schema docs.documents.batchUpdate --resolve-refs   # expand $ref pointers

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Google Docs

Extracting a document ID from a URL

Google Docs URLs look like:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/<DOCUMENT_ID>/edit

The document ID is the long alphanumeric string between /d/ and /edit.

Reading a document

Raw JSON (full structure with styling metadata)

gws docs documents get --params '{"documentId": "<DOC_ID>"}'

Plain text (recommended for most use cases)

Pipe through the bundled extraction script — it strips styling metadata and preamble lines automatically:

gws docs documents get --params '{"documentId": "<DOC_ID>"}' | \
  python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/extract-doc-text.py"

The script detects where the JSON payload starts, so there is no need to manually skip the Using keyring backend: ... line that gws sometimes prints before the JSON.

Creating a document

gws docs documents create --json '{"title": "My New Document"}'

Returns the created document JSON including the new documentId.

Appending text

The +write helper is the simplest way to add content:

gws docs +write --document <DOC_ID> --text 'Text to append'

Text is inserted at the end of the document body. For richer edits (formatting, insertion at a specific position, deletion), use batchUpdate.

Batch updates

For structured edits — insert at a position, delete a range, apply formatting:

gws docs documents batchUpdate \
  --params '{"documentId": "<DOC_ID>"}' \
  --json '{
    "requests": [
      {
        "insertText": {
          "location": { "index": 1 },
          "text": "Hello, world!\n"
        }
      }
    ]
  }'

Run gws schema docs.documents.batchUpdate --resolve-refs to explore the full set of request types (insertText, deleteContentRange, updateTextStyle, etc.).

Gotchas

• Keyring preamble — gws may print Using keyring backend: ... to stdout before the JSON payload. The bundled extract-doc-text.py handles this. If piping raw JSON elsewhere, skip the first line with tail -n +2.
• Index math — document indices are 1-based. The body content starts at index 1. Fetch the document first to find correct insertion indices.
• Large documents — the get response can be sizeable. Prefer the plain-text extraction path unless you specifically need the structural or styling metadata.

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Future services

This skill will expand as new GWS integrations are needed. Each service follows the same gws <service> <resource> <method> pattern. When a service is added, it gets a new section here (or a references/<service>.md file if the documentation grows large).

Planned:

• Drive — gws drive files list|get|create|update|delete
• Sheets — gws sheets spreadsheets get|create|batchUpdate
• Gmail — gws gmail users messages list|get|send
• Calendar — gws calendar events list|get|insert|update|delete