See it in action:

Debian package mcp-server-googleoffice (VitexSoftware fork)

This repository is the VitexSoftware fork of taylorwilsdon/google_workspace_mcp. Upstream base: v2.4.1 (+13 commits, b5d4323b), last synced 2026-11-11.

apt install mcp-server-googleoffice           # server, /usr/bin/mcp-server-googleoffice
apt install mcprack-mcp-server-googleoffice   # registers it in the local mcprack catalog

The server is installed under /usr/share/mcp-server-googleoffice. The launcher /usr/bin/mcp-server-googleoffice speaks stdio by default and supports --help and --version. The upstream name workspace-mcp is kept as a compatibility symlink.

The mcprack companion registers the server with WORKSPACE_MCP_READ_ONLY=true and MCP_SINGLE_USER_MODE=1. Admins add the OAuth client as secrets in mcprack.

Read-only mode (WORKSPACE_MCP_READ_ONLY=true): the server requests only read-only Google scopes. In this fork it also drops every tool that is not annotated readOnlyHint=true. The one exception is start_google_auth, which is needed to obtain credentials.

Environment variables

The canonical list is debian/server.json, installed as /usr/share/mcp-server-googleoffice/server.json.

On the stdio path, OAuth needs a one-time interactive consent. Run start_google_auth once, or pre-seed WORKSPACE_MCP_CREDENTIALS_DIR with a token, or use a service account with domain-wide delegation.

Tools and annotation classes

What It Does

Workspace MCP connects AI assistants to all twelve major Google Workspace services - 120+ tools behind a single MCP server, with OAuth 2.1 multi-user auth, three progressive tool tiers, read-only mode, a full CLI, and stateless container deployment. It runs locally over stdio for legacy clients and remotely over streamable HTTP with full implementation of the latest MCP spec.

The README covers just enough to get you running, with extensive documentation on the website:

Security & Compliance

Services

Each page lists every tool with its tier, parameters, required scopes, and example prompts. The complete reference covers all twelve in one place.

💬 Google Chat needs a one-time Chat app configuration and a Workspace account - see the Chat setup FAQ.

Quick Start

Set credentials → pick a launch command → connect your client. Full walkthrough with screenshots: workspacemcp.com/quick-start

You'll need an OAuth client from Google Cloud Console in a project with the Google APIs enabled for the services you plan to use. The docs have one-click enable links for every API plus a single gcloud services enable command that covers them all, and the quick start guide walks through the whole setup in about five minutes.

Agentic OAuth clients: this server only calls Google's REST APIs, so your OAuth client does not need Google's "Use this client for an AI-powered agent" setting. If your organization wants agent traffic labeled for admin controls, create a separate client with that setting enabled; it can't be changed on an existing client after November 12, 2026.

# 1. Credentials
export GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID="..."
export GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET="..."

# 2. Launch - pick a tier
uvx workspace-mcp --tool-tier core       # essential tools
uvx workspace-mcp --tool-tier extended   # core + management ops
uvx workspace-mcp --tool-tier complete   # everything

# Or cherry-pick services
uvx workspace-mcp --tools gmail drive calendar

# 1. Credentials - MCP clients connect with PKCE and no
#    secret, but Google still requires one server-side
export MCP_ENABLE_OAUTH21=true
export GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID="..."
export GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET="..."
#    Alternatively, point GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET_PATH at a client_secret.json
#    that contains the client id and secret (env vars take precedence).
export WORKSPACE_MCP_PORT=8000
export GOOGLE_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI="http://localhost:${WORKSPACE_MCP_PORT}/oauth2callback"
export OAUTHLIB_INSECURE_TRANSPORT=1

# 2. Launch - OAuth 2.1 requires HTTP transport
uvx workspace-mcp --transport streamable-http --tool-tier core

Tool tiers keep context windows lean: core is the essential set, extended adds management operations, complete loads everything. Combine with --tools <service> ..., --read-only, or per-service --permissions, and subtract individual tools with --disabled-tools <name> ... - details in the server modes docs.

Per-request toolsets let HTTP clients sharing one server see different tools, using the same headers as the GitHub MCP server. X-MCP-Toolsets takes comma-separated service names (the --tools names, e.g. gmail,drive) and X-MCP-Tools takes comma-separated tool names (e.g. search_gmail_messages); when both are sent the request gets the union. Names ignore case and whitespace, unknown names match nothing, and a blank or missing header leaves the tool list unchanged. Headers only narrow what the server already loaded: a tool removed by the tier, --tools, --read-only, --permissions or --disabled-tools stays unavailable, and calls to tools outside the request's selection fail as unknown tools.

Connect Your Client

Claude Desktop, web & mobile - run the server in HTTP mode and add it as a Connector (Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector). This is the recommended path; the Connector guide has step-by-step screenshots. Legacy stdio configuration remains available for clients without Connector support - see the FAQ.

Claude Code

# Start the server in HTTP mode, then:
claude mcp add --transport http workspace-mcp http://localhost:8000/mcp

# Optional: install the bundled skill for better Workspace tool routing
ln -s "$(pwd)/skills/managing-google-workspace" ~/.claude/skills/managing-google-workspace

ChatGPT - connect via Developer Mode with the ChatGPT guide.

VS Code, LM Studio, Open WebUI, and everything else - any MCP client works over streamable HTTP (recommended) or stdio. Client-specific walkthroughs live in the guides and FAQ.

CLI

workspace-cli lists and calls tools against a running server with encrypted, disk-backed OAuth token caching - authenticate once, script forever:

uv run workspace-cli list
uv run workspace-cli call search_gmail_messages query="is:unread" max_results=5

Install globally with uv tool install . from this repo. ⚠️ Don't use uvx workspace-cli - an abandoned PyPI package squats that name.

Deployment & Advanced Configuration

Everything you need to run this in production lives in two places. The documentation covers auth modes and server configuration:

• OAuth 2.1 multi-user auth - bearer tokens, required for remote or shared HTTP endpoints
• Stateless container mode - zero disk writes for locked-down deployments
• OAuth proxy storage backends - memory, disk, or Valkey/Redis for distributed setups
• External OAuth provider mode - bring your own auth server, validate bearer tokens only
• Service accounts with domain-wide delegation - per-request user impersonation with an optional domain allowlist
• Trusted-gateway identity - proxy-verified per-user isolation with Pomerium, Cloudflare Access, oauth2-proxy, or any JWKS-verifiable gateway
• OpenTelemetry tracing - optional, off unless you configure an OTLP endpoint
• Docker - docker build -t workspace-mcp . && docker run -p 8000:8000 workspace-mcp

The Advanced Deployment guide covers self-hosting specifics: reverse proxy setup with WORKSPACE_EXTERNAL_URL (including the nginx Origin: null consent workaround, the WORKSPACE_MCP_ALLOW_NULL_ORIGIN_CONSENT escape hatch, and the Referrer-Policy pitfall), origin validation and VS Code webview allowlisting, credential store backends (local directory or GCS with CMEK enforcement), and the complete environment variable reference.

Production tuning is all environment variables; the names below link to their reference entries.

• Google API requests: WORKSPACE_MCP_GOOGLE_API_WORKERS, WORKSPACE_MCP_GOOGLE_API_TIMEOUT_SECONDS
• External OAuth token validation: WORKSPACE_MCP_TOKEN_VALIDATION_WORKERS, WORKSPACE_MCP_TOKEN_VALIDATION_CACHE_TTL
• Memory ceilings: WORKSPACE_MCP_MAX_FILE_BYTES, WORKSPACE_MCP_STATELESS_INLINE_MAX_BYTES, WORKSPACE_MCP_MAX_OFFICE_XML_BYTES
• Text returned per call: get_drive_file_content returns long content a page at a time by default, so a long file does not fill the model's context. WORKSPACE_MCP_MAX_CONTENT_CHARS sets the page size (default 40000; 0 returns whole content by default). Each page ends with a note giving the offset to read on from. This is only the default: a client can always pass full_content=true to get the whole file in one call. Text being read page by page is kept in memory for ten minutes so later pages are not downloaded again, within WORKSPACE_MCP_PAGED_CONTENT_CACHE_BYTES per process (default 33554432, 32 MiB; 0 keeps nothing).
• Sessions and health probes: WORKSPACE_MCP_SESSION_IDLE_TIMEOUT, WORKSPACE_MCP_READINESS_TIMEOUT_SECONDS
• DNS-rebinding protection: WORKSPACE_MCP_ALLOWED_HOSTS, a comma-separated list of hostnames without ports (for example workspace-mcp,10.0.0.5). When set, requests whose Host is not loopback, listed, or the host of WORKSPACE_EXTERNAL_URL or an allowed origin get 403, so include every name clients and health probes use. Unset, any Host is accepted.
• Hosted servers without access to the caller's disk: WORKSPACE_MCP_DISABLE_LOCAL_FILES With local files disabled, create_drive_file, update_drive_file and the import tools offer return_upload_url: the caller PUTs the bytes to the returned URL. If the file sits in a cloud-mirrored folder (Drive for desktop), copy it to a local directory first, since mirrored paths can stall mid-upload.
• OAuth 2.1 token refresh and lifetimes: see .env.oauth21
• OAuth 2.1 consent screen: WORKSPACE_MCP_OAUTH_PROXY_REQUIRE_CONSENT=remember shows the OAuth proxy's consent screen once per browser for each MCP client instead of on every authorization; cross-site navigations are still prompted. The default, always, prompts every time. Any other value fails startup.
• OAuth 2.1 Google account choice: WORKSPACE_MCP_OAUTH_PROXY_GOOGLE_PROMPT sets the prompt the OAuth proxy sends to Google's authorization endpoint (default consent); external provider mode ignores it. select_account consent shows Google's account chooser, so a user signed in to Google with another account can pick the right one, and still returns a refresh token. The only other accepted value is consent; anything else fails startup.

For downloads, horizontally scaled or scale-to-zero HTTP deployments (Cloud Run, Kubernetes) can stage attachments in Google Cloud Storage instead of instance-local disk, whose /attachments/{id} URL may reach a different instance. Install the gcs extra and set WORKSPACE_MCP_FILES_GCS_BUCKET to a bucket name; objects are written under WORKSPACE_MCP_FILES_GCS_PREFIX (default attachments) and handed out as V4 signed URLs valid for one hour, which the client fetches straight from GCS. This also lets stateless mode return download URLs instead of inline files. stdio ignores the setting, since its client reads the local file path directly. The runtime service account needs object read and write access on the bucket — roles/storage.objectUser, or roles/storage.objectCreator plus roles/storage.objectViewer — and, without an exported private key, roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator on itself so URLs can be signed through IAM. Read access is not optional: a signed URL carries the signer's authority, so without storage.objects.get the upload and the signing both succeed while the client's download fails with 403. Objects are not deleted by the server, so add a bucket lifecycle rule that removes them after a few hours.

Security Best Practices

By default this server sends no data anywhere except Google's APIs, using your own OAuth client credentials - no usage reporting, analytics, license server, or SaaS dependency. MIT licensed with no CLA, no dual licensing, and no copyleft in the dependency chain. The full security posture - scope minimization, sensitive-path blocking, stateless mode - is documented at workspacemcp.com.

A few things worth internalizing before you connect an LLM to your email:

• Prompt injection is real. Emails, docs, and events can contain hidden instructions. Only connect trusted data to an LLM, and be deliberate about which write tools you enable.
• Never commit .env, client_secret.json, or .credentials/ to source control.
• Local file reads are sandboxed to the managed attachment directory. Broaden with ALLOWED_FILE_DIRS only if you trust the client and its data sources; .env*, ~/.ssh/, ~/.aws/, and similar paths are always blocked.
• Production deployments should use HTTPS and OAuth 2.1.

Development

uv sync --group dev    # install deps
uv run ruff check .    # lint
uv run pytest          # test

Single-file service modules live in g<service>/, tools are registered with @server.tool decorators, and tiers are defined in core/tool_tiers.yaml. PRs welcome.

License

MIT - see LICENSE. The license is 21 lines and says what it means.

Workspace MCP is an independent open-source project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google LLC. Google and Google Workspace are trademarks of Google LLC.

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