How to connect Google Docs to OpenClaw

The ClawHub skill teaches OpenClaw about Google Docs, but the calls run through the ClawLink plugin and your connected account. Make sure Google Docs is connected in the dashboard, then start a fresh chat so OpenClaw reloads the tool catalog. If OpenClaw runs as a persistent gateway, restart it so the new tools register.

Reconnect Google Docs from the dashboard, then start a fresh chat if the runtime still has the old tool catalog loaded.

Google Docs tool schemas load on demand the first time a tool runs and are cached after that, so this error usually clears on its own: wait a few seconds and retry the same request. If every Google Docs call keeps failing with it in a fresh chat, reconnect from the dashboard, and contact support if it still persists — that pattern points to a configuration problem on our side, not something you can fix by reconnecting again.

Two usual causes. The connected account may not have access to the specific workspace, inbox, store, or project in the request — check that first. If access looks right, the agent may have sent a placeholder value (like "YOUR_ID" or an example id from documentation) instead of a real one: ask it to run a list or search tool first, then retry the action with a real id from those results. Most failures at this stage are one of these two, not ClawLink bugs.

Check these in order. First, sharing: the connected Google account must have access to that specific document. Opening it fine in your browser proves nothing if the browser is signed in as a different account than the one you connected. Second, which account is connected — personal versus work is the usual split, and each sees a different set of files. Third, scope: Google's consent screen allows unticking individual permissions, and a partial approval leaves a connection that reads but cannot write. Reconnect and accept the full set. Fourth, and least likely but real: the agent may have passed a placeholder document id from an example, such as YOUR_DOCUMENT_ID or an id copied from documentation, which Google rejects with a permission error rather than a not-found. Have the agent search for the document and use the id from the result.

Ask the agent to diagnose it:

Run googledocs_search_documents for the document title and tell me exactly which documents you can see and which Google account you are connected as. Do not retry the failed call yet.

Almost always the account, not the search. googledocs_search_documents looks only at documents the connected account can reach, so a file living in a workspace you joined with a different identity is invisible to it. The second cause is scope of expectation rather than permission: search matches on document metadata and content Google has indexed, so a brand-new document, or one shared seconds ago, may not be findable yet even though fetching it by id works immediately. If you have the id or the URL, ask the agent to use googledocs_get_document_by_id directly instead of searching for it.

Ask the agent to diagnose it:

Tell me which Google account you are connected as, then run googledocs_search_documents with just one distinctive word from the title and show me everything it returns.

If you built the integration yourself with your own Cloud project, check the publishing status of your OAuth consent screen first. Google issues refresh tokens that expire after seven days to any project whose external consent screen is still in Testing, unless the only scopes requested are name, email, and profile — which Docs scopes are not. That is why a hand-rolled Google Docs agent works for exactly a week and then stops, and publishing the app is the fix rather than re-running auth. On a ClawLink connection there is no consent screen of yours to publish, so this shape does not apply; a connection that stops here means the grant was revoked, and reconnecting from the dashboard restores it.

Try reconnecting Google Docs and complete the consent flow in the same browser session. Partial OAuth approvals or switching accounts mid-flow can leave the connection incomplete.

Yes. ClawLink is the fastest way to connect OpenClaw to Google Docs: link your Google Docs account once in the browser and OpenClaw can call the Google Docs API through 33 ready-made tools — no custom code or token handling.

Paste the setup prompt from this page into OpenClaw. It installs the ClawLink Google Docs skill from ClawHub, then you click Connect in the dashboard to authorize Google Docs. OpenClaw calls the tools from the next message — no config files or API keys to manage.

About two minutes. Sign in, click Connect next to Google Docs in the dashboard, authenticate, and OpenClaw can use it from the next chat message.

The alternative to ClawLink is usually manual OAuth app setup plus your own token handling, permission troubleshooting, and tool plumbing for OpenClaw. That is fine if you want to build and maintain the integration yourself. Most teams just want Google Docs working from chat.

No, and this is the difference worth understanding because nearly every guide assumes you do. Building it yourself means creating a project, enabling the Docs API, configuring an OAuth consent screen, and living with the fact that an unverified app in testing mode issues refresh tokens that stop working after seven days. ClawLink runs the connection through an already-registered app, so the only thing you see is Google's own consent screen asking whether to grant access to your documents. Google's permission model is unchanged by this — the agent gets what you approve, nothing more.

Yes, if your Google account can open it. The connection carries your access, so anything shared with you directly, or shared with a group you belong to, is reachable. What does not work is a document that was never shared with the connected account — a link you can open in a browser because you are signed in as a different Google identity will not be visible to the agent. That mismatch is the single most common cause of a 403 here, and it is a sharing problem in Google Docs rather than anything to fix in OpenClaw.

Whichever one you picked during the connect flow. Google shows an account chooser when you are signed into more than one, and the grant attaches to the account you select there. Because personal and work accounts usually see completely different document sets, choosing the wrong one produces a connection that looks healthy and finds nothing. If searches come back empty while you can plainly see the file, reconnect from the dashboard and pick the other account.

Both. The toolset covers creation and editing, not just retrieval: googledocs_create_document and googledocs_create_document_markdown make new documents, googledocs_insert_text_action and googledocs_replace_all_text change existing ones, and there are tools for headers, footers, footnotes, page breaks, tables, bullets, and inline images. There is also googledocs_export_document_as_pdf when the end product is a file rather than a document. The markdown-based tools are usually the ones to ask for, because writing structured content through them is far more reliable than describing formatting operations one at a time.

The ClawHub skill teaches OpenClaw about Google Docs, but the calls run through the ClawLink plugin and your connected account. Make sure Google Docs is connected in the dashboard, then start a fresh chat so OpenClaw reloads the tool catalog. If OpenClaw runs as a persistent gateway, restart it so the new tools register.