PaperClipAI/doc/connections/GOOGLE-WORKSPACE.md

Google Workspace connections

New Google Workspace setup uses one google-workspace connection and the workspace.all OAuth profile. Paperclip first offers Gmail, Drive (including Docs, Sheets, and Slides), and Calendar. All three start enabled with read and write access. Users can disable a group or choose read-only access. New setup does not offer Chat, Contacts/directory, or cross-service Search.

The built-in connector is behind the default-off enableGoogleWorkspaceConnector experimental setting while Paperclip's Google app verification is pending. When the setting is off, the Apps page hides the built-in connector, and the server blocks its setup, discovery, and execution. Google apps from MCP aggregators (for example Composio Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive) then appear in the catalog instead. Saved per-service Google connections stay visible and usable. Turn the setting on in Settings → Experimental to test the built-in connector.

The combined connection has one credential grant, capability catalog, policy profile, audit trail and reconnect lifecycle. It requests only the selected groups' scopes (nine scopes for the default selection), not the legacy full union. Google's consent screen also lets users decline permissions; discovery skips services without grants and excludes unsupported actions. The gateway checks actual grant scopes again before each call, including after refresh. Requested scopes alone never authorize an action.

Before managed or customer-owned OAuth opens, Paperclip saves the validated service choice as non-secret setup intent on the draft. It is bound to the company, connection, initiating actor, grant kind, and credential subject. Declined or expired authorization and a cold Finish setup return restore that choice, not the new-account write defaults. Historical drafts without a matching saved intent require an explicit choice. Reconnecting an established account without a new choice keeps its exact grant request.

Overlapping customer-owned starts preserve the latest saved draft choice through client binding and authorization metadata updates. Each OAuth state and consent URL keeps that attempt's own requested scopes. These updates preserve unrelated current settings and other users' pending proposals in both configuration records.

An agent can hand setup to its responsible human without choosing services or creating provider OAuth state. If the agent proposes services, the human can review and change them in the picker. Saving the human's choice consumes only that person's pending proposal, so an old proposal cannot replace their choice after a declined sign-in. Neither draft intent nor a proposal is consent.

Discovery isolates service outages. Healthy services remain usable while the connection's health message identifies unavailable services and recommends a catalog refresh. Failed services' cached actions are disabled until rediscovered; an outage affecting every requested service still fails the refresh. Loss of the shared OAuth grant never degrades into a successful partial discovery. Because the catalog is shared, actions skipped because of narrower consent are preserved when another active grant supports them. Failed services and tools removed from a successful discovery are still disabled. Each caller's listing and dispatch use only their selected grant, without combining permissions from different identities. Individual call failures are reported and audited without marking unrelated Google services unhealthy; they do not trigger automatic write retries.

Existing individual product connections and their direct setup routes remain supported. They are not automatically merged, upgraded or reauthorized. The Sheets robot-account method remains separate because it uses explicitly shared files, not the user's Google OAuth identity.

Google's hosted Workspace MCP servers are Developer Preview services. The app endpoints remain separate. Paperclip namespaces actions by service and routes them to a closed endpoint registry using the combined grant. It does not create child connections or send provider tokens through Paperclip ID.

The catalog reuses the existing reviewed Google mark (google-people.svg), registered under its own google-workspace brand identity. No new artwork is downloaded or substituted for a product logo.

Combined profile deployment and verification

Deploy the companion Cloud broker registry before enabling workspace.all in CLOUD_HARNESS_CONNECTOR_GOOGLE_ENABLED_PROFILES. It uses the existing WORKSPACE client pair; that client's Cloud project must have every applicable MCP API and preview enrollment. Do not remove legacy enabled profiles while their grants are in use. This code change does not enable the broker profile or deploy any stack.

The signed request and envelope authentication bind the exact selected request; the legacy 21-scope profile remains supported for old clients. The encrypted credential payload preserves Google's actual nonempty subset. Missing scope evidence and scopes outside that reviewed union fail closed on authorization and refresh. Individual legacy profiles retain exact matching. For the new google/workspace.all profile only, HKDF info is SHA-256(AAD) to remain below Node's 1024-byte limit. AES-GCM still authenticates the complete AAD; legacy envelope key derivation is unchanged.

Managed OAuth: browser → Cloud /v1/connector/sessions → Google https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth → Cloud /v1/connector/oauth/google/callback → instance /api/tools/oauth/cloud-connector/callback. Cloud exchanges codes and refreshes at https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token; provider tool calls go directly from the instance to the fixed endpoints below. Customer OAuth uses the instance's existing /api/tools/oauth/callback instead. Register that exact HTTPS or loopback callback on the customer-owned client.

Removal is local for managed grants: Google's project-wide revocation can break other connections. Before rollout, verify full and partial consent with an enrolled test account, allowed reads/writes, reconnect, refresh and removal. Deterministic tests are not real-provider proof. Combining profiles simplifies onboarding, not Google's per-scope demonstration, justification or security-assessment obligations.

Sources: granular consent, Workspace MCP setup.

Connections catalog and rollout

The Connections page offers one Google Workspace card for new accounts. Saved individual-service accounts stay visible and retain their management routes. This replaces the earlier display-only Google visibility hold. Showing the card does not enable managed OAuth: signed instance-specific broker availability still controls it. A customer-owned OAuth app remains a separate setup method.

Do not upgrade or unpin existing verification instances as an implementation step. Qualify the selected-scope flow on an isolated reviewer staging app first. See service consent for the app/broker deployment order and live verification gates.

Developer Preview enrollment

Google grants preview access to the specific Workspace email addresses and Google Cloud project numbers registered with the program. Submitting the form is not the approval signal:

1. Google first sends a Google Group membership notification after verifying the Workspace account.
2. Google then sends a final confirmation after registering the Cloud project, usually within a couple of days. This final email is the signal that MCP testing can begin.
3. If no final confirmation arrives within a week, check spam and contact the Developer Preview program team from the program page.

Enrollment does not authorize every user of an OAuth client. Additional tester emails and Cloud projects must be added through Google's member request forms. Google's preview terms also prohibit making a pre-GA integration available to end users outside the enrolled company or domain unless Google grants explicit permission. Consequently, Paperclip-managed Google OAuth is limited to registered internal testers during preview. Other companies must enroll their own Workspace testers and Cloud project and use a customer-owned OAuth app until Google makes Workspace MCP generally available.

Service endpoints and legacy capability choices

App card	MCP endpoint	Capability choices
Gmail	https://gmailmcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Read only; read and create drafts
Google Drive	https://drivemcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Read only; read and create files
Google Docs	https://docsmcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Read only; read and edit
Google Sheets	https://sheetsmcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Read only; read and edit; share selected sheets with the robot account
Google Slides	https://slidesmcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Read only; read and edit
Google Calendar	https://calendarmcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Read only; read and manage events
Google Chat	https://chatmcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Read only; read and send messages
Google People	https://people.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Read contacts
Google Workspace Search	https://workspacemcp.googleapis.com/mcp/v1	Search Workspace

Legacy product setup exposes capability choices under Change. The combined Workspace setup has one capability and asks for service groups before Google consent. The endpoint table also documents legacy connections; it is not the new-account service list. When the managed method is available, it uses Paperclip by default. A small Use your own Google OAuth app link reveals the custom client fields; Use Paperclip instead returns to the managed method. The available authentication methods are:

• Connect with Paperclip uses the Paperclip Cloud broker when that exact profile is returned for this enrolled instance by the signed POST https://my.paperclip.app/v1/connector/instance-status request. The anonymous capabilities document is global discovery only and never enables an internal-pilot method locally.
• Use your own Google OAuth app uses customer-supplied OAuth credentials and the app definition's exact reviewed scopes.
• Use the Paperclip robot account remains an additional Google Sheets-only option for explicitly shared spreadsheets.

Before Google consent, the setup flow shows the credential's human and agent access and lets the user change it. A personal choice stores the tokens only on that user's grant. A company choice stores them on the default organization grant, while still recording which signed-in Google principal completed consent so refresh and reconnect stay bound to that principal.

Catalog discovery and connection creation use the same signed, instance-specific profile availability. Local enrollment files and Cloud-delivered environment identities follow this same path; neither enables managed methods globally in the static app definitions. Saved connections remain recognizable for OAuth callback, refresh, and revoke, while the broker enforces current profile access. Switching capability or authentication methods preserves the selected credential owner when the new method supports that owner.

Legacy product-specific broker profiles

The Paperclip-managed method signs every broker request with one explicit profile. The broker binds that profile into sessions, one-time claims, sealed token envelopes, and refresh. Per-profile removal is local-only for managed Google grants. Google's revocation endpoint can invalidate all grants for the same user and managed client, so Paperclip does not call it while removing one Workspace profile.

App	Read profile	Write profile
Gmail	gmail.read	gmail.draft
Drive	drive.read	drive.write
Docs	docs.read	docs.write
Sheets	sheets.read	sheets.write
Slides	slides.read	slides.write
Calendar	calendar.read	calendar.write
Chat	chat.read	chat.write
People	people.read	—
Workspace Search	workspace-search.read	—

Every new signed request includes a profile. The Cloud broker rejects a request whose provider, profile, or exact scope set does not match its closed registry.

Instance configuration

All Paperclip-managed Google methods use the existing enrolled-instance keys:

PAPERCLIP_CLOUD_CONNECTOR_BASE_URL=https://my.paperclip.app
PAPERCLIP_CLOUD_CONNECTOR_ENVIRONMENT=production
PAPERCLIP_CLOUD_CONNECTOR_INSTANCE_ID=inst_example
PAPERCLIP_CLOUD_CONNECTOR_SIGN_PRIVATE_KEY=...
PAPERCLIP_CLOUD_CONNECTOR_SEAL_PRIVATE_KEY=...

No per-app client secret is stored on the Paperclip instance for the managed path. For customer-owned OAuth, the setup flow collects that customer's Google OAuth client ID and secret and stores them through the normal instance-vault path.

Cloud-hosted stacks receive these values through the existing per-stack secret delivery path. A self-hosted instance creates its keys during enrollment and stores them with owner-only permissions in the instance's ignored secret directory. The setup page supplies its authenticated same-origin HTTPS address to enrollment, so a normal Tailscale-hosted self-hoster does not need to edit config.json or set PAPERCLIP_PUBLIC_URL; the enrolled origin becomes the durable callback binding. The former PAPERCLIP_ID_CONNECTOR_* values use an incompatible Paperclip ID protocol and are not read aliases. Enroll with Paperclip Cloud and reconnect legacy grants before their old access tokens expire.

The gallery requests the broker capability document with a short cache. A Paperclip-managed method is omitted unless its exact profile is enabled at the broker; the independent app card and customer-owned OAuth method remain available. This supports profile-by-profile rollout and rollback without collapsing the nine cards into one app.

See Gmail connection for the detailed enrollment, signing, encryption, environment-isolation, and security review runbook inherited by all profiles.

Safety boundary

Every Google profile has an explicit MCP tool allowlist. Unknown Developer Preview tools default to disabled. Read profiles expose only reviewed read operations. Write profiles add only the reviewed write operations for their app; destructive or unreviewed tools do not become available merely because Google adds them upstream.

Service-specific minimum scopes (2026-09-30)

Docs, Sheets, and Slides request only their service's read-only scope in the read profile and its read/write scope in the write profile. They do not also request drive.readonly or drive.file: those are authorization alternatives, not additional requirements. Drive and Workspace Search retain their separate Drive permissions. Calendar write requests calendar.calendarlist.readonly and calendar.events; the latter also authorizes suggest_time. Calendar read retains calendar.events.freebusy alongside list/event read-only access.

References: Google's Docs read and update, Sheets read and update, Slides read and update, and Calendar suggest_time.

The write scopes support editing existing accessible files by ID. drive.file is a valid narrower alternative for app-authorized files, but would require a different per-file authorization workflow. Read-only profiles remain separate; the project-wide union is not the scope set requested by every connection.

Deploy with the matching Cloud broker registry and test fresh grants in staging before production. Signed authorization and refresh requests use exact scope sets, so mixed versions fail closed. The broker rejects old broader grants and refresh responses without explicit scope evidence for these reduced profiles. Reconnect affected connections; do not relabel or globally revoke existing tokens. Customer-owned methods request the same reduced sets on new consent; previously issued grants are not retroactively narrowed. The 21-scope integration union is unchanged by these profile-level reductions. Console must still keep Drive/free-busy entries required by other profiles and separately used identity scopes. Fresh provider proof is a release requirement, not implied by unit tests.

Google Chat scope reduction (2026-09-22)

chat.read requests only chat.spaces.readonly and chat.messages.readonly. chat.write adds chat.messages.create. The same sets apply to both managed and customer-owned OAuth methods. Neither requests chat.memberships.readonly nor chat.users.readstate.readonly.

Conversation lookup, message history, ordinary message search, and the write profile's message sending remain supported. Membership listing and marking messages read/unread remain outside the tool allowlist. search_messages cannot filter by read state: the app hides isUnread from its agent and Test schemas and rejects any explicit isUnread/is_unread argument, including false or null, before dispatch. It never silently drops the filter. The guard also applies to cached catalogs and existing broader grants.

References: Google's Chat MCP setup and message-search parameters.

Roll out the app and Cloud broker scope registries together in staging and production: their signed requests and sealed credentials use exact scope sets. During a mixed-version rollout, Chat authorization/refresh can fail closed. Existing Google tokens are not retroactively narrowed or revoked by this code change. A refresh response still containing removed scopes, or omitting the scope set needed to verify the grant, is rejected by the broker; reconnect affected Chat grants for new consent. Do not revoke the shared Google client to migrate one profile, because that can break other Workspace connections. After deployment, verify fresh reduced-scope consent, ordinary Chat search/history and sending, then reconcile Google Console and the verification evidence with the deployed scope set.