Google Forms

Google Forms

Use gws forms to create new forms, add questions to them, change publish settings, and read submitted responses. Wraps the Forms v1 API.

Prerequisites

• If this deployment is managed/hosted, the Google credential is already provisioned at sign-in — gws is installed and authenticated, so skip the setup flow below and run gws directly. Scopes are fixed at sign-in on a managed deployment: when a call fails with scope required or HTTP 401, tell the user which action needs a scope their account wasn't granted, instead of trying to set anything up. (The scope list below still describes which verb needs which scope.)
• gws installed and authenticated. If gws is not on PATH OR gws auth status reports no authenticated user, do NOT silently call setup. Instead, in a single short reply to the user:
  1. State plainly what's missing — e.g. "Google Workspace access isn't set up on this machine yet" or "your Google sign-in has expired."
  2. Ask one sentence: "Want me to walk you through setting it up?" Wait for the user's answer.
  3. If they say yes, call read_skill with name google-workspace-setup and run that skill's onboarding flow turn-by-turn. If they say no or ask to defer, acknowledge briefly and stop — do not retry the original request.
• Apply the same flow when any gws forms ... call fails mid-task with command not found / ENOENT, HTTP 401, "no credentials", or "scope required". Don't report the failure as a dead end — surface the missing prerequisite and ask if the user wants to set it up before moving on.
• OAuth scopes the user picked at login must cover the verbs the agent will use:
  • Create / edit forms (read + write structure): forms.body
  • Read form structure only (e.g. mapping questionId → title for summaries): forms.body.readonly
  • Read submitted responses: forms.responses.readonly
  • Summarize responses by question text: forms.responses.readonly AND forms.body.readonly (or forms.body). forms.responses.readonly is NOT on forms.get's authorized scope list — you need a body scope to fetch the structure separately.
  • The Forms API also accepts the broader drive scope for create, get, and responses — an account with a full drive grant can edit form structure and read responses without the separate Forms scopes.

Selecting a Google account

The connected Google accounts (each with its tag, email, and config dir) are listed in your system context under "Connected Google accounts". To target a specific account, prefix the command with its config dir:

GOOGLE_WORKSPACE_CLI_CONFIG_DIR="<configDir>" gws forms forms create --json '{"info":{"title":"Survey"}}'

Selection rule: one account connected → just use it. Two or more:

• The user named or clearly implied one account (a tag, an email, or unambiguous context) → use only that account.
• A read/lookup/search the user didn't tie to an account (e.g. listing events, searching mail, finding a doc) → run it against every connected account (one gws call per config dir) and aggregate, labeling each result by its tag and email. Don't pick just one, and don't ask — the user wants the whole picture across accounts.
• A write (send, create, edit, delete) with no account named → ASK which account first; never guess.

If no accounts are connected yet, fall back to the setup flow in Prerequisites (read_skill with google-workspace-setup). On a managed/hosted deployment an account is always connected, so this case doesn't arise.

When to Use

• The user asks Gini to create a Google Form (survey, signup, feedback, RSVP).
• Reading responses to an existing form and summarizing them.
• Updating publish settings on an existing form (accepting responses on/off, etc.).
• Watching for new responses on an existing form.

When NOT to Use

• Structured data the user maintains themselves — use Sheets (gws sheets ...), not Forms.
• Free-form notes — use apple-notes, obsidian, or google-docs instead.
• Agent-internal state — use the memory tool.
• Long, branching surveys with complex logic — Forms supports basic section navigation but real survey tooling (Typeform, Qualtrics) is more appropriate.

Quick Reference

The Forms surface is small: forms.create, forms.get, forms.batchUpdate, forms.setPublishSettings, and the forms.responses subresource for reading submissions.

Create a form (two-step)

forms.create only honors info.title and info.documentTitle. Body items must be added with a follow-up batchUpdate. This is by design — Google rejects body content in the create call.

# Step 1: create the empty form
gws forms forms create --json '{
  "info": {
    "title": "Team feedback",
    "documentTitle": "Team feedback (internal)"
  }
}'

# Capture the response's "formId" — you'll need it for step 2.

# Step 2: add items (questions) with batchUpdate
gws forms forms batchUpdate \
  --params '{"formId":"<FORM_ID>"}' \
  --json '{
    "requests": [
      {
        "createItem": {
          "item": {
            "title": "How are things going?",
            "questionItem": {
              "question": {
                "required": true,
                "textQuestion": {"paragraph": true}
              }
            }
          },
          "location": {"index": 0}
        }
      },
      {
        "createItem": {
          "item": {
            "title": "How satisfied are you?",
            "questionItem": {
              "question": {
                "required": true,
                "scaleQuestion": {
                  "low": 1, "high": 5,
                  "lowLabel": "Not at all", "highLabel": "Extremely"
                }
              }
            }
          },
          "location": {"index": 1}
        }
      }
    ]
  }'

Read a form's structure

gws forms forms get --params '{"formId":"<FORM_ID>"}'

The response contains the title, items, and the responderUri (the public URL to share with respondents).

Read responses

# All responses on a form
gws forms forms responses list --params '{"formId":"<FORM_ID>"}' --page-all

# A specific response
gws forms forms responses get \
  --params '{"formId":"<FORM_ID>","responseId":"<RESPONSE_ID>"}'

# Filter by submission time (server-side filter)
gws forms forms responses list \
  --params '{"formId":"<FORM_ID>","filter":"timestamp > 2026-06-01T00:00:00Z"}' \
  --page-all

Each response has an answers map keyed by questionId. Cross-reference against forms.get to map question IDs back to titles when summarizing. forms.get reads form structure and requires forms.body.readonly (or forms.body) — forms.responses.readonly alone is not on its authorized scope list, so summary workflows need both.

Publish settings

When piping gws into jq, drop stderr first with 2>/dev/null — gws prints a Using keyring backend: keyring preamble there that would otherwise contaminate the JSON (never 2>&1).

# Inspect
gws forms forms get --params '{"formId":"<FORM_ID>"}' 2>/dev/null | jq '.publishSettings'

# Update (legacy forms not supported)
gws forms forms setPublishSettings \
  --params '{"formId":"<FORM_ID>"}' \
  --json '{"publishSettings":{"publishState":{"isPublished":true,"isAcceptingResponses":true}}}'

Watch for new responses

gws forms forms watches create \
  --params '{"formId":"<FORM_ID>"}' \
  --json '{"watch":{"target":{"topic":{"topicName":"projects/<PROJECT>/topics/<TOPIC>"}},"eventType":"RESPONSES"}}'

Watches deliver to Pub/Sub. For most agent workflows, polling responses.list on a schedule is simpler.

Rules

1. forms.create is two-step by design: create the empty shell, then batchUpdate to add items. Trying to embed items[] in the create call is silently dropped.
2. Don't add a redundant text confirmation before forms.create, forms.batchUpdate, or forms.setPublishSettings. The runtime's terminal_exec approval gate is the user's safety net. When the user's command is clear ("create a feedback form with these three questions"), execute. Do ask one clarifying question when the command is ambiguous — the user named items but no title, multiple forms match a name they want to edit, or setPublishSettings would flip a form from draft to public.
3. batchUpdate is atomic across all requests. Build the full sequence (createItem, updateItem, deleteItem, …) and send once; do not loop one-request-at-a-time, which doubles round trips and risks half-applied state.
4. The responderUri returned by forms.get is a public URL. Anyone with the link who is allowed by the form's access settings can submit. Be explicit when sharing it.
5. To map answers back to question text, fetch the form structure once with forms.get and keep the questionId → title map locally — do not refetch the structure on every response. This requires forms.body.readonly (or forms.body) in addition to forms.responses.readonly; forms.get rejects a responses-only scope.
6. For structured data the user already owns (existing CSV or sheet), Forms is the wrong tool — keep the data in Sheets and use gws sheets. Forms is for collecting new input, not storing existing data.
7. Long, branching surveys are better served by dedicated survey tools (Typeform, Qualtrics). Forms supports basic page navigation and required questions but no advanced logic.

For flags not shown here, run gws forms --help or gws schema forms.<resource>.<method> to inspect a specific API method.