google-drive-mcp

MCP server for Google Drive - list, search, upload, download, and manage files and folders.

Use Cases

Answer from files: "What was our revenue target in the Q2 board deck?" → searches Drive, reads the relevant doc, and answers your question.

Project scaffolding: Starting a new vendor onboarding → creates a folder structure with subfolders for contracts, compliance, deliverables, and meeting notes, plus template docs and sheets.

Feedback synthesis: "Summarize the feedback from my manager across my last 10 presentation decks" → reads comments from multiple files and identifies themes and development areas.

Localization workflow: "We're onboarding contractors in Japan - translate the onboarding folder from English to Japanese and flag anything that needs local adaptation (HR policies, holidays, etc.)" → reads multiple docs, translates, and highlights areas needing review.

(These are just examples - any workflow that needs file search, reading, or organization can use this. Use in combination with google-docs-mcp for reading/editing Google Docs, or google-sheets-mcp for Google Sheets.)

Setup

1. Create Google OAuth credentials

1. Go to Google Cloud Console
2. Create a new project (or use existing)
3. Enable the Google Drive API
4. Go to APIs & Services → OAuth consent screen, set up consent screen
5. Go to APIs & Services → Credentials → Create Credentials → OAuth client ID
6. Choose Web application
7. Add http://localhost:3000/callback to Authorized redirect URIs
8. Note your Client ID and Client Secret

2. Run the server

GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID='your-client-id' \
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET='your-client-secret' \
MCP_TRANSPORT=http \
npm start

The server runs on http://localhost:3000 by default. Change with PORT=3001.

3. Add to your MCP client

With the server running, follow the instructions on install-mcp, which generates the right config for your MCP client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, VS Code, and more).

Architecture

This server acts as an OAuth proxy to Google:

graph LR
    A[MCP client] <--> B[google-drive-mcp] <--> C[Google OAuth/API]

1. Server advertises itself as an OAuth authorization server via /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server
2. /register returns the Google OAuth client credentials
3. /authorize redirects to Google, encoding the client's callback URL in state
4. /callback receives the code from Google and forwards to the client's callback
5. /token proxies token requests to Google, injecting client credentials
6. /mcp handles MCP requests, using the bearer token to call Drive API

The server holds no tokens or state - it just proxies OAuth to Google.

Tools

Drive Query Syntax

The files_list tool supports Drive's query syntax for filtering:

# By name
name contains 'report'
name = 'Budget 2024'

# By type
mimeType = 'application/pdf'
mimeType = 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder'
mimeType = 'application/vnd.google-apps.document'

# By folder
'folder-id' in parents

# By ownership
'user@example.com' in owners

# Combined
name contains 'report' and mimeType = 'application/pdf'

Google Drive API Scopes

• drive - Full access to Drive files

Contributing

Pull requests are welcomed on GitHub! To get started:

1. Install Git and Node.js
2. Clone the repository
3. Install dependencies with npm install
4. Run npm run test to run tests
5. Build with npm run build

Releases

Versions follow the semantic versioning spec.

To release:

1. Use npm version <major | minor | patch> to bump the version
2. Run git push --follow-tags to push with tags
3. Wait for GitHub Actions to publish to the NPM registry.