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