Google Docs
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Arcade.dev LLM tools for Google Docs
13tools
9require secrets
Google Docs Toolkit
The Google Docs toolkit connects Arcade to the Google Docs (and Drive) APIs, enabling agents and LLMs to create, read, edit, search, and comment on documents using the connected user's Google account.
Capabilities
- Document creation & content authoring: Create blank documents, create documents from plain text or Markdown (with headings, bold, italic, and lists), and append text to the end of any tab in an existing document.
- Reading & metadata: Retrieve a document as raw Google Docs API JSON, as the compact DocMD format (with block IDs and character indices for editing), or as lightweight metadata (title, ID, URL, tab hierarchy, character counts).
- Structured editing: Apply batchUpdate requests against precise character indices exposed by the DocMD representation; when called without requests, returns current DocMD for subsequent edits.
- Search & discovery: Search Drive for documents by keyword (metadata-only or with body content), scoped to files this app can reach by default.
- Comments: Post whole-document comments as the connected account, and list comments with thread state, replies, author display names, and quoted passage anchors.
- Account & access management: Confirm which Google account is active (
WhoAmI), and generate a Google Drive inline file-picker URL so users can grant the app access to additional files when a prior tool reports not-found or access-denied.
OAuth
This toolkit uses OAuth 2.0 via Arcade's Google auth provider. See the Arcade Google auth provider docs for setup details, including which OAuth scopes are required.
Secrets
ENABLE_GOOGLE_DRIVE_INLINE_PICKER_URL— A secret that enables theGoogleDocs.GenerateGoogleFilePickerUrltool to produce a functional Google Drive inline file-picker URL. This is an Arcade-side configuration value (not a Google-issued credential); obtain or activate it through the Arcade secrets dashboard or your self-hosted Arcade environment's secrets configuration. Without it, the picker URL tool either returns an empty URL or is non-functional. Because this secret gates a UI capability rather than a raw API key, there is no Google Cloud Console step involved — it is provisioned purely within Arcade.
For general guidance on configuring secrets in Arcade tools, see Create Tool Secrets.
Available tools(13)
13 of 13 tools
Operations
Behavior
| Tool name | Description | Secrets | |
|---|---|---|---|
Comment on a specific document by its ID.
Reaches only documents this app has been granted edit access to — by default,
those it created or the user picked.
The comment is posted as the connected account and notifies the document's
collaborators.
The comment covers the whole document. No API can anchor a new Google Docs comment to a
passage, so the Docs UI lists it in the sidebar without highlighting any text. Quote the
passage inside comment_text when the comment is about one. | 1 | ||
Create an empty Google Docs document with the specified title.
The document is owned by the connected account and lands in its Drive root. Returns
the new document's id, which every other tool here takes as its target. To create a
document that already has content, use the tool that takes text rather than creating
an empty one and appending to it. | |||
Create a Google Docs document with the specified title and text content.
When input_format is MARKDOWN, the text_content is parsed as Markdown and the resulting
document is formatted with headings, bold, italic, bullet lists, and numbered lists. | |||
Read or edit a Google Docs document using structured batchUpdate requests.
Reaches only documents this app has been granted edit access to — by default,
those it created or the user picked.
When called without requests, returns the document content in DocMD format (block IDs,
character indices, and text styles). When called with requests, applies the edits and
returns the updated DocMD. Use the DocMD indices from the response to construct
requests for subsequent calls. | 1 | ||
Generate a URL where the user can grant this app access to specific Drive files.
Check `url` first. An empty `url` with a `reason` means this app already reaches every
document the connected account can open, so there is no per-file grant to request: this
tool cannot change any outcome, and a document that could not be read is one the
account itself cannot open. Do not retry it.
Otherwise the URL opens Google's first-party Drive picker, where the user selects which
files to share with this application — it is not a sign-in or credential prompt. Use
this when a prior tool reported that a file was not found or access was denied, and the
user expects the file to exist. After the user completes the picker flow, retry the
prior tool. | |||
Get the latest version of the specified Google Docs document as DocMD.
Reaches only documents this app has been granted access to — by default, those it
created or the user picked.
The DocMD output will include tags that can be used to annotate the document with location
information, the type of block, block IDs, and other metadata. If the document has tabs,
all tabs are included in sequential order unless a specific tab_id is provided. | 1 | ||
Get a Google Docs document as the raw Google Docs API document resource.
Returns the API's own structure, including every tab's content. Reaches only
documents this app has been granted access to — by default, those it created or the
user picked. Use this when the document's exact structure matters, such as reading
style runs, named ranges or inline object properties. For reading or summarizing the
text, prefer the DocMD form, which is far smaller and carries the character indices
edits are built from. | 1 | ||
Get metadata for a Google Docs document including hierarchical tab structure.
Reaches only documents this app has been granted access to — by default, those it
created or the user picked.
Returns document title, ID, URL, total character count, and nested tab information
with character counts for each tab. | 1 | ||
Append text to the end of a Google Docs document.
Reaches only documents this app has been granted edit access to — by default,
those it created or the user picked.
Each tab keeps its own content and its own character indices, so the text lands at the
end of one tab rather than the end of the file. | 1 | ||
List comments on the specified Google Docs document.
Reaches only documents this app has been granted access to — by default, those it
created or the user picked.
Returns each comment's text, its replies, and the display name of whoever wrote it.
Drive does not document an order for comments, so do not read the first one as the
most recent; compare createdTime when recency matters. A long-running document can
carry thousands of comments, so results are paged rather than returned whole, and the
counts describe the page in hand rather than the document.
A comment anchored in the Docs UI carries quotedFileContent, the passage it is attached
to, so finding that text in the document body places the comment. A comment that covers
the whole document has no quotedFileContent. Each comment also reports whether its thread
has been resolved. | 1 | ||
Search for documents in the user's Google Drive and return documents with their main body
content and tab metadata. Excludes documents that are in the trash.
Searches only the documents this app has been granted access to — by default, those
it created or the user picked.
Content it returns was written by whoever has edited each document, which need not be
the connected account and need not be the owner.
Returns main body content only with metadata about tabs. To read every tab of a specific
document, retrieve that document by its id. When only metadata is needed, search without
retrieving content. | 1 | ||
Search for documents in the user's Google Drive. Excludes documents in trash.
Searches only the documents this app has been granted access to — by default, those
it created or the user picked.
Returns metadata only. To read a document's content, retrieve it by its id. | 1 | ||
Get the connected Google account's profile: name, email address and profile picture.
Use this to confirm which account the connection is acting as before creating or
editing a document, or when the user asks who they are signed in as.
It reads the Google profile and opens no document, so it does not report which
documents this app can reach. To find out whether a particular document is reachable,
search for it or open it. Fields Google does not return are omitted rather than empty. |
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