Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Workspace CLI

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 316 posts

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#171

Post by justinwp »

mmaunder wrote: post #57

Google really know how to screw up a product experience. npm install -g @googleworkspace/cli gws auth setup { "error": { "code": 400, "message": "gcloud CLI not found. Install it from https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install ", "reason": "validationError" } } Which takes you to... https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install-sdk Where you have to download a tarball, extract it and run a shell script. I mean how ha…

You don't need to use gcloud if you already have:

1. A GCP project (needed for OAuth) 2. Enabled APIs in said project

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#172

Post by dakolli »

swaminarayan wrote: post #169

This reminds me a bit of how the GitHub CLI evolved into a foundation for automation and tooling. Do you see the Google Workspace CLI primarily as something for humans using the terminal, or more as a stable interface that automation and AI agents can build on?

I'm just not going to give agents access to my workspace account!

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#173

Post by swaminarayan »

dakolli wrote: post #172
swaminarayan wrote: post #169

This reminds me a bit of how the GitHub CLI evolved into a foundation for automation and tooling. Do you see the Google Workspace CLI primarily as something for humans using the terminal, or more as a stable interface that automation and AI agents can build on?

I'm just not going to give agents access to my workspace account!

I agree

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#174

Post by mhogers »

dakolli wrote: post #172
swaminarayan wrote: post #169

This reminds me a bit of how the GitHub CLI evolved into a foundation for automation and tooling. Do you see the Google Workspace CLI primarily as something for humans using the terminal, or more as a stable interface that automation and AI agents can build on?

I'm just not going to give agents access to my workspace account!

but may they have their own workspace account while working with you? :)

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#175

Post by fergie »

> gws doesn't ship a static list of commands. It reads Google's own Discovery Service at runtime and builds its entire command surface dynamically.

What is the practical difference between a "discovery service"+API and an MCP server? Surely humans and LLMs are better off using discovery service"+API in all cases? What would be the benefit of MCP?

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#176

Post by patates »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #105
varenc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that strange as well. My guess is that `npm` is just the package manager people are most likely to already have installed and doing it this way makes it easy. They might think asking people to install Cargo is too much effort. Wonder if the pattern of using npm to install non-node tools will keep gaining traction.

Most people aren't going to have npm installed though. Nobody outside of web devs uses it.

A lot of people who are not web devs use it, that's what I see. I even saw some mainframe developers use npx to call some tool on some data dump.

Also, this is a web project anyway. Google Workspace is web based, so while there is a good chance that the users aren't web developers, it's a better chance that they have npm than anything else.

In the case that they don't, releases can be downloaded directly too: https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/releases

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#177

Post by patates »

freakynit wrote: post #41
varenc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that strange as well. My guess is that `npm` is just the package manager people are most likely to already have installed and doing it this way makes it easy. They might think asking people to install Cargo is too much effort. Wonder if the pattern of using npm to install non-node tools will keep gaining traction.

Why not just downloadable binary then?

They have them: https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/releases

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#178

Post by dahcryn »

fergie wrote: post #175

> gws doesn't ship a static list of commands. It reads Google's own Discovery Service at runtime and builds its entire command surface dynamically. What is the practical difference between a "discovery service"+API and an MCP server? Surely humans and LLMs are better off using discovery service"+API in all cases? What would be the benefit of MCP?

Benefit of mcp is that it exists and kinda works, and a lot of tools are available on it. I guess it's all about adoption. But inherently yeah it's a discovery service thingy. Google will never embrace mcp since it's invented by anthropic

I consider it a good first attempt, but indeed hope for a sort of mcp2.0

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#179

Post by gempir »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #105
varenc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that strange as well. My guess is that `npm` is just the package manager people are most likely to already have installed and doing it this way makes it easy. They might think asking people to install Cargo is too much effort. Wonder if the pattern of using npm to install non-node tools will keep gaining traction.

Most people aren't going to have npm installed though. Nobody outside of web devs uses it.

If you had to pick one package manager that was most likely installed across all the different user machines in the world, I'd say npm is a pretty good bet.

Re: Google Workspace CLI

#180

Post by heinrichhartman »

mogili1 wrote: post #157

I was excited to see this but all of that went away when I realized you need to create an app in GCP to use it. Can't really expect non technical users to set this up across the company.

Can someone explain to me, why Google can't (or does not want to) implement the same auth flow that any other SaaS company uses:

# API Keys in Settings

1. Go to Settings -> API Keys Page

2. Create Token (set scope and expiration date)

# OAuth flow

1. `gws login` shows url to visit

2. Login with Google profile & select data you want to share

3. Redirect to localhost page confirms authentication

I get that I need to configure Project and OAuth screens if I want to develop an Applications for other users, that uses GCP services. This is fine. But I am trying to access my own data over a (/another) HTTP API. This should not be hard.

Post reply on HN