acedatacloud/skills/google-gmail

Name: google-gmail
Author: acedatacloud

Claude Code and agent skill by acedatacloud/skills

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Read, search, triage, label, archive and send Gmail mail / threads / labels / attachments via the Gmail v1 REST API. Use when the user mentions Gmail, "my inbox", unread mail, recent emails from someone, summarising a thread, downloading an attachment, finding mail by label / query, archiving or labelling a thread, or drafting and sending a reply / new message.

Install

npx vskill@latest install acedatacloud/skills/google-gmail

SKILL.md

Drive Gmail via curl + jq. The user's OAuth bearer token is in $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN; every call needs it as Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN. At minimum the token carries gmail.readonly plus the identity scopes (openid email profile); if the user opted in to write at install time it also carries gmail.modify (label / archive / trash) and/or gmail.send (compose + send). Always assume the narrowest scope until a write actually fails — don't ask Google for new scopes from here.

The Gmail API returns standard JSON; failures surface as {"error": {"code": 401|403|..., "message": "..."}} — show that error verbatim. 401 means the token expired (re-install). 403 insufficientPermissions means the user didn't grant the write scope this call needs — explain which scope is missing and suggest re-installing the connector with the matching write box checked.

Before any destructive write (trashing a thread, sending an email) show the user the exact target / draft and ask them to confirm. Don't fan out across many messages without an explicit go-ahead.

Always start with `users/me/profile` to confirm the connection works AND learn which Gmail account you're operating against. Mailbox payloads can be huge — fetch metadata first, only format=full when the user actually wants the body of a specific message.

Optional: Google Workspace CLI (`gws`) for outbound mail

`gws` is Google's official CLI (not officially supported — community-maintained on the googleworkspace org). It dynamically builds its command surface from Google's Discovery Document, exits non-zero on API errors, and ships hand-crafted helper commands (prefixed +) that handle the message-encoding boilerplate.

Use `gws` for sending mail. The Gmail REST API requires every outbound message to be a fully-formed RFC 822 message, base64url-encoded into a raw field, with reply / forward threading carried in In-Reply-To / References / threadId. The +send / +reply / +reply-all / +forward helpers do all of that for you. For everything else (read, search, labels, attachments) gws and curl are equivalent, so the curl recipes below are usually shorter — stay on those.

Install

npm install -g @googleworkspace/cli   # or: brew install googleworkspace-cli
# Pre-built binaries also at https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/releases
gws --version

Auth

gws reads its OAuth bearer token from the GOOGLE_WORKSPACE_CLI_TOKEN environment variable. The Gmail token used in this skill is in $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN, so re-export it once at the top of every shell block that calls gws:

export GOOGLE_WORKSPACE_CLI_TOKEN="$GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN"

You can confirm the active account with gws gmail users getProfile --params '{"userId":"me"}'.

Send / reply / forward

# New message
gws gmail +send \
  --to alice@example.com \
  --cc team@example.com \
  --subject "Q1 status" \
  --body "Numbers attached."
 
# Reply (handles threadId, In-Reply-To, References automatically;
# To is the original sender, Subject gets the "Re: " prefix)
gws gmail +reply --message-id MSG_ID --body "Thanks — looks good."
 
# Reply-all
gws gmail +reply-all --message-id MSG_ID --body "+1"
 
# Forward to new recipients (preserves the original message body
# inline; original headers are summarised in the forward block)
gws gmail +forward --message-id MSG_ID --to bob@example.com

Each helper exits with a non-zero status and a JSON error on stderr if Google rejects the request — surface that error verbatim. +send / +reply need the gmail.send scope; if the user only granted gmail.readonly you'll see 403 insufficientPermissions and should ask them to re-install the connector with the send box checked.

All the read / list / search / label / attachment recipes below are intentionally not rewritten to gws — a one-line curl ... | jq is shorter and easier to compose with shell pipelines.

Recipes

Verify auth (always run first)

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/profile" \
  | jq '{email: .emailAddress, totalMessages, totalThreads, historyId}'

List recent unread inbox

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages" \
  --data-urlencode 'q=is:unread in:inbox newer_than:7d' \
  --data-urlencode 'maxResults=20' \
  | jq '.messages // [] | .[]'

Always default `.messages` to `[]` — Gmail's messages.list omits the field entirely when there are zero matches (the response is just {"resultSizeEstimate": 0}), so a bare .messages[] will crash jq with Cannot iterate over null (null) and exit 5. Same applies to .threads, .labels, .drafts on their list endpoints. If the result is empty, tell the user plainly (e.g. "No unread mail in the last 7 days") instead of retrying.

The messages.list endpoint returns only {id, threadId} — you have to fan out to messages.get for headers / body. Cheap pattern: list ids → get with format=metadata&metadataHeaders=From,Subject,Date for each. Use format=full only if the user wants the body.

List + enrich with headers (one-shot inbox triage)

IDS=$(curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages" \
  --data-urlencode 'q=is:unread in:inbox' \
  --data-urlencode 'maxResults=10' \
  | jq -r '.messages // [] | .[].id')
 
# If $IDS is empty the for-loop below runs zero times — tell the user
# "no unread mail" rather than echoing an empty result.
for ID in $IDS; do
  curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
    --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages/$ID" \
    --data-urlencode 'format=metadata' \
    --data-urlencode 'metadataHeaders=From' \
    --data-urlencode 'metadataHeaders=Subject' \
    --data-urlencode 'metadataHeaders=Date' \
    | jq '{id: .id, snippet: .snippet, headers: (.payload.headers | map({(.name): .value}) | add), labels: .labelIds}'
done | jq -s '.'

Read a single message body (plain text and html)

ID='18f1a2b3c4d5e6f0'
RESP=$(curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages/$ID" \
  --data-urlencode 'format=full')
 
echo "$RESP" | jq '{id, snippet, headers: (.payload.headers | map({(.name): .value}) | add)}'
 
# Body is base64url-encoded inside payload.parts[].body.data — Gmail
# splits multipart messages, so collect every text/plain or text/html
# leaf and base64url-decode them.
echo "$RESP" | jq -r '
  def walk(p):
    if (p.parts // null) then (p.parts | map(walk(.)) | add) else [p] end;
  walk(.payload)
  | map(select(.mimeType=="text/plain" and (.body.data // "") != ""))
  | .[].body.data' \
  | tr '_-' '/+' | base64 -d 2>/dev/null

If the plain-text leaf is empty, fall back to the text/html leaf (same walk, swap the mimeType filter) and tell the user it's HTML.

Read a whole thread

THREAD_ID='18f1a2b3c4d5e6f0'
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/threads/$THREAD_ID" \
  --data-urlencode 'format=metadata' \
  --data-urlencode 'metadataHeaders=From' \
  --data-urlencode 'metadataHeaders=Subject' \
  --data-urlencode 'metadataHeaders=Date' \
  | jq '{id, historyId, messages: [(.messages // [])[] | {id, snippet, from: (.payload.headers | from_entries.From), date: (.payload.headers | from_entries.Date)}]}'

Search by Gmail query

# Same query DSL the Gmail UI uses: from:, to:, subject:, has:attachment,
# is:unread, label:Work, after:2026/04/01, before:2026/05/01, …
Q='from:boss@example.com subject:OKR newer_than:30d'
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages" \
  --data-urlencode "q=$Q" \
  --data-urlencode 'maxResults=20' \
  | jq '.messages // []'

q syntax reference: <https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190> — the model-friendly bits are from:, to:, cc:, subject:, label:, is:unread, is:read, is:starred, has:attachment, filename:pdf, newer_than:7d, older_than:30d, after:YYYY/MM/DD, before:, in:inbox, in:trash. Combine with OR / () / -.

List labels (system + user-defined)

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/labels" \
  | jq '.labels[] | {id, name, type, color: .color.backgroundColor}'

The system labels are INBOX, SENT, DRAFT, IMPORTANT, UNREAD, STARRED, SPAM, TRASH, plus CATEGORY_* (Personal / Social / Promotions / Updates / Forums).

Filter by label

LABEL_ID='Label_4'  # from labels.list above
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages" \
  --data-urlencode "labelIds=$LABEL_ID" \
  --data-urlencode 'maxResults=20' \
  | jq '.messages // []'

Multiple labelIds query params behave like AND.

Download an attachment

MSG_ID='18f1a2b3c4d5e6f0'
 
# 1. find the attachment leaf
RESP=$(curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages/$MSG_ID" \
  --data-urlencode 'format=full')
 
echo "$RESP" | jq '
  def walk(p):
    if (p.parts // null) then (p.parts | map(walk(.)) | add) else [p] end;
  walk(.payload)
  | map(select(.body.attachmentId? != null))
  | .[] | {filename, mimeType, attachmentId: .body.attachmentId, size: .body.size}'
 
# 2. fetch the attachment by id
ATT_ID='ANGjdJ-abc123'
OUT=/tmp/attachment.bin
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages/$MSG_ID/attachments/$ATT_ID" \
  | jq -r .data | tr '_-' '/+' | base64 -d > "$OUT"
file "$OUT"

Pagination

PAGE_TOKEN=''
while : ; do
  RESP=$(curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
    --get "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages" \
    --data-urlencode 'q=in:inbox' \
    --data-urlencode 'maxResults=100' \
    ${PAGE_TOKEN:+--data-urlencode "pageToken=$PAGE_TOKEN"})
  echo "$RESP" | jq -c '.messages[]?'
  PAGE_TOKEN=$(echo "$RESP" | jq -r '.nextPageToken // empty')
  [ -z "$PAGE_TOKEN" ] && break
done

Write recipes

These all need gmail.modify (label / archive / trash) or gmail.send (compose + send). If the user only granted gmail.readonly at install you'll get 403 insufficientPermissions — surface that and ask them to re-install with the write boxes checked.

Mark a message read / unread, star it, archive it (gmail.modify)

MSG_ID='18f1a2b3c4d5e6f0'
 
# Mark as read = remove the UNREAD label
curl -sS -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"removeLabelIds":["UNREAD"]}' \
  "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages/$MSG_ID/modify"
 
# Star it = add the STARRED label
curl -sS -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"addLabelIds":["STARRED"]}' \
  "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages/$MSG_ID/modify"
 
# Archive = remove from INBOX (keeps in All Mail)
curl -sS -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_GMAIL_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"removeLabelIds":["INBOX"]}' \
  "https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages/$MSG_ID/modify"

The modify endpoint takes addLabelIds and removeLabelIds together — useful for atomic "archive + label" moves. Use the same shape on /threads/$THREAD_ID/modify to apply across a whole thread.

Apply a custom label

# 1. find or remember the label id from labels.list
LABEL_ID='Label_4'
MSG_ID='18f1a2b3c4d5e6f0'

This is the start of the file. Read the full SKILL.md on GitHub.

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Source

SKILL.md in the repositoryCheckingskills/google-gmail/SKILL.md

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Something wrong with this skill or its page? Tell us.

Install

SKILL.md

Optional: Google Workspace CLI (gws) for outbound mail

Install

Auth

Send / reply / forward

Recipes

Verify auth (always run first)

List recent unread inbox

List + enrich with headers (one-shot inbox triage)

Read a single message body (plain text and html)

Read a whole thread

Search by Gmail query

List labels (system + user-defined)

Filter by label

Download an attachment

Pagination

Write recipes

Mark a message read / unread, star it, archive it (gmail.modify)

Apply a custom label

Security

Quality evaluation

Source

Popularity

Works with

Optional: Google Workspace CLI (`gws`) for outbound mail