Google Sheets

What it is

The small business's database. Job lists, price lists, stock counts, review trackers and form responses live in shared sheets, often edited by several people at once.

How an agent connects

1. Google's official MCP server (sheetsmcp.googleapis.com), in Developer Preview. Read tools get values and spreadsheet details. Write tools update values and formulas, insert rows and columns and change the spreadsheet. OAuth sign-in, Cloud project in the preview program.
2. Sheets API for code an intern builds. Use a read-only scope for reports. Use drive.file when the tool only touches a sheet it created.
3. Apps Script bound to the sheet, for alerts and dashboard refreshes the owner can see and switch off.
4. n8n has Sheets nodes for an owner's own automations.

Generic CSV and spreadsheet files exported from other systems are covered by the spreadsheet-exports connector.

What agents may do

agent_access: read. An agent reads rows and reports, summarises or flags. It does not edit the business's working sheets. When a workflow needs rows written, such as a summary tab or a dashboard, the coding agent builds that into a separate tab or sheet the owner approved, and a person checks the first runs.

Through the gateway

The gateway has no Sheets actions yet. Reads use a read-only connection the owner grants to the named sheets. A write to a working sheet goes through webhook.post to an Apps Script web app the owner registered; every post is held for the owner's approval. Deleting rows or tabs is never automated.

Watch out for

• Quotas: the Sheets API allows 300 read and 300 write requests a minute per project and 60 a minute per user per project. Over that you get 429; back off and retry.
• Keep each request near the recommended 2 MB.
• People edit sheets by hand. Read headers by name, not column letter, and stop when a header is missing.
• Formulas in cells can carry text from customers. Never write customer text that starts with =, +, - or @.
• Turn off the official server's write tools on a client's sheets while it is in preview.