Google Drive Skill for Codex

Google Drive

Use this as the top-level router for Google file work inside the unified Google Drive plugin. Do not route the user toward separate Google Docs, Google Sheets, or Google Slides plugins.

Start with Google Drive for file discovery and file lifecycle tasks, then route to narrower sibling skills only when the task becomes specific to Docs, Sheets, or Slides.

Workflow

• Ground the target file first.
• If the user did not provide an exact file URL or ID, use Google Drive search, recent files, folder listing, or metadata reads to identify the right file.
• If the request starts as "find X and then update it," do the Drive discovery step first instead of guessing the target.

• Stay in the base Google Drive workflow for Drive-native tasks.
• Use the base workflow for search, fetch, recent files, folders, sharing, copying, deleting, exporting, revision history, file moves, and other file-lifecycle work that is not primarily about editing Docs, Sheets, or Slides content.
• For version-history requests, including "previous version," "revision history," "what changed since the last version," or "compare to the prior revision," ground the file, fetch the current content, use list_file_revisions, fetch the immediately previous revision or the user-named revision with fetch_file_revision, then compare the fetched revision against the current content. Do not say previous versions are unsupported until you have checked whether revision tools are available for the target file.
• For file move requests, ground the source file and target folder, read the file metadata including its current parents, then use update_file with addParents for the target folder and removeParents for only the verified source parent or parents that should no longer contain it. Preserve unrelated parents, and verify the move by reading metadata or listing the target folder before the final response.
• Before any export or download, read or reuse Drive metadata so the MIME type is known. Use export_file only for native Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files. For PDFs, images, ZIPs, Office files, recordings, and other non-native Drive files, use fetch(download_raw_file=True) when raw bytes are needed or normal fetch for best-effort text extraction. Do not retry export_file after metadata shows a non-native MIME type.

• Route to the narrowest sibling skill that matches the file type and job.
• Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides comment creation, comment replies, comment resolution, or review-by-comments: use google-drive-comments.
• Google Docs net-new creation, content summary, revision planning, prose rewriting, or section edits: use google-docs.
• Google Sheets creation, local spreadsheet import, range inspection, table cleanup, data restructuring, formula design or repair, chart creation or repair, or batch updates: use google-sheets.
• Google Slides deck summary, content edits, new deck creation, local presentation import, visual cleanup, structural repair, or template migration: use google-slides.

Routing Rules

• If the request is ambiguous between Drive and a file-type surface, use the artifact itself as the tie-breaker:
• Doc -> Docs skill
• Sheet -> Sheets skill
• Deck -> Slides skill
• If the user wants to find a file and then edit it, do both in one flow: Drive for discovery, then the file-type skill for the edit.
• If the user wants a Google Workspace outcome but has not named a file type yet, start with Drive discovery instead of asking them to choose among separate Google plugins.
• If the user asks to create a new Google Doc, route to the Docs skill; it owns the mandatory local .docx -> native Google Docs import workflow and the explicit-user-override boundary. Do not create a blank Google Doc directly from this router.
• If the user asks to import a local .docx into Google Docs, route to the Docs skill and use its native conversion workflow. Preserve the source file type only when the user explicitly asks for that.
• If the user asks to create a new Google Sheet, route to the Sheets skill. The Sheets skill should prefer the @spreadsheets plugin or $Excel skill to create a local .xlsx, then import it as native Google Sheets.
• If the user asks to import a local .xlsx, .xls, .ods, .csv, or .tsv into Google Sheets, route to the Sheets skill and use native Google Sheets conversion by default. Preserve the source file type only when the user explicitly asks for that.
• If the user asks to create a new Google Slides deck, route to the Slides skill; it owns the mandatory local .pptx -> native Google Slides import workflow and the explicit-user-override boundary. Do not create a blank Google Slides deck directly from this router.
• If the user asks to import a local .ppt, .pptx, or .odp into Google Slides, route to the Slides skill and use its native conversion workflow. Preserve the source file type only when the user explicitly asks for that.
• If the user asks to export or download an existing Drive file, choose the action from metadata: native Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files use export_file; non-native PDFs, images, ZIPs, CSVs, Office files, audio, and video use fetch, with download_raw_file=True for raw-file workflows.

Write Safety

• Preserve the user's existing file organization, sharing state, and target artifact unless the request clearly asks to change them.
• When a task can be satisfied by a file-level Drive operation alone, do not load heavier Docs, Sheets, or Slides skills.
• For write-heavy Sheets or Slides work, read the specialized skill before the first large update so request shapes stay grounded.
• For any file import or explicit direct create that returns a user-facing Google Workspace link, wait for the write action to complete and verify the created file with connector readback or Drive metadata readback before returning the URL. Use only a URL or id observed from the completed connector result or readback; never synthesize or predict the URL.

Related Skills

• Comments: google-drive-comments
• Docs: google-docs
• Sheets: google-sheets
• Slides: google-slides