gmail-mcp

MCP server for Gmail - read, send, archive, and manage emails.

Use Cases

Flight check-in: “Check me in for my flight tomorrow” → finds your confirmation email, extracts the booking reference, and completes check-in with browser use.

Expense submission: “Submit my Amazon purchases from last week as expenses” → finds receipts, extracts amounts/categories, and files them in your expense system.

Package tracking: “Where’s my package from Acme?” → finds the shipping notification, extracts the tracking number, and fetches current delivery status.

Find that attachment: “What did we settle on for the budget? Michelle sent me something yesterday” → locates the email and opens the attached spreadsheet.

Vacation mode: “I’m on holiday Dec 20-Jan 2” → sets up Gmail auto-reply, blocks your calendar, and updates your Slack status in one go.

Meeting follow-up: After a call, your assistant reads the Gemini transcript, summarizes key decisions, and drafts a follow-up email with action items.

(These are just examples - any workflow that needs email search, reading, or sending can use this.)

Setup

1. Create Google OAuth credentials

1. Go to Google Cloud Console
2. Create a new project (or use existing)
3. Enable the Gmail 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[gmail-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 Gmail API

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

Tools