Add Gmail Tool

Add Gmail Tool (OneCLI-native)

This skill wires the @gongrzhe/server-gmail-autoauth-mcp stdio MCP server into selected agent groups. The MCP server reads stub credentials containing the onecli-managed placeholder; the OneCLI gateway intercepts outbound calls to gmail.googleapis.com and injects the real OAuth bearer from its vault.

Tools exposed (from gmail-mcp@1.1.11, surfaced to the agent as mcp__gmail__<name>): search_emails, read_email, send_email, draft_email, delete_email, modify_email, batch_modify_emails, batch_delete_emails, download_attachment, list_email_labels, create_label, update_label, delete_label, get_or_create_label, list_filters, get_filter, create_filter, create_filter_from_template, delete_filter.

Why this pattern: v2's invariant is that containers never receive raw API keys — OneCLI is the sole credential path (see CHANGELOG v2.0.0). The stub-file pattern satisfies this: the container sees "onecli-managed" placeholders, the gateway swaps them in flight.

Phase 1: Pre-flight

Verify OneCLI has Gmail connected

onecli apps get --provider gmail

Expected: "connection": { "status": "connected" } with scopes including gmail.readonly, gmail.modify, gmail.send.

If not connected, tell the user:

Open the OneCLI web UI at http://127.0.0.1:10254, go to Apps → Gmail, and click Connect. Sign in with the Google account you want the agent to act as.

Verify stub credentials exist

ls -la ~/.gmail-mcp/gcp-oauth.keys.json ~/.gmail-mcp/credentials.json 2>&1

If both exist and contain "onecli-managed":

grep -l onecli-managed ~/.gmail-mcp/gcp-oauth.keys.json ~/.gmail-mcp/credentials.json

...skip to Phase 2.

If either file exists but does not contain onecli-managed, STOP and tell the user — these are real OAuth credentials from a previous non-OneCLI install. Back them up, then delete before proceeding. The OneCLI migration normally handles this; if it didn't, something is wrong.

If both files are absent, write them now:

mkdir -p ~/.gmail-mcp
cat > ~/.gmail-mcp/gcp-oauth.keys.json <<'EOF'
{
  "installed": {
    "client_id": "onecli-managed.apps.googleusercontent.com",
    "client_secret": "onecli-managed",
    "redirect_uris": ["http://localhost:3000/oauth2callback"]
  }
}
EOF
cat > ~/.gmail-mcp/credentials.json <<'EOF'
{
  "access_token": "onecli-managed",
  "refresh_token": "onecli-managed",
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "expiry_date": 99999999999999,
  "scope": "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.readonly https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.modify https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.send"
}
EOF
chmod 600 ~/.gmail-mcp/gcp-oauth.keys.json ~/.gmail-mcp/credentials.json

Verify mount allowlist covers the path

cat ~/.config/nanoclaw/mount-allowlist.json

~/.gmail-mcp must sit under an allowedRoots entry (e.g. /home/<user>). If it doesn't, tell the user to run /manage-mounts first or add their home directory.

Check agent secret-mode

For each target agent group, confirm OneCLI will inject Gmail secrets into its container. Find the OneCLI agent ID that matches the group's agentGroupId:

onecli agents list

If that agent's secretMode is all, you're done — Gmail secrets (identified by OneCLI's Gmail hostPattern) will auto-inject. If it's selective, explicitly assign the Gmail secrets using the safe merge pattern (set-secrets replaces the entire list — always read first):

GMAIL_IDS=$(onecli secrets list | jq -r '[.data[] | select(.name | test("(?i)gmail")) | .id] | join(",")')
CURRENT=$(onecli agents secrets --id <agent-id> | jq -r '[.data[]] | join(",")')
MERGED=$(printf '%s' "$CURRENT,$GMAIL_IDS" | tr ',' '\n' | sort -u | paste -sd ',' -)
onecli agents set-secrets --id <agent-id> --secret-ids "$MERGED"
onecli agents secrets --id <agent-id>

Phase 2: Apply Code Changes

Check if already applied

grep -q 'GMAIL_MCP_VERSION' container/Dockerfile && \
echo "ALREADY APPLIED — skip to Phase 3"

Add MCP server to Dockerfile

Edit container/Dockerfile. Find the pinned-version ARG block:

ARG CLAUDE_CODE_VERSION=2.1.116
ARG AGENT_BROWSER_VERSION=latest
ARG VERCEL_VERSION=latest
ARG BUN_VERSION=1.3.12

Add a new line:

ARG GMAIL_MCP_VERSION=1.1.11

Then find the last pnpm global-install RUN block (the one that installs @anthropic-ai/claude-code) and add a new block after it, before # ---- Entrypoint:

RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/root/.cache/pnpm \
    pnpm install -g \
        "@gongrzhe/server-gmail-autoauth-mcp@${GMAIL_MCP_VERSION}" \
        "zod-to-json-schema@3.22.5"

Pinned version matters — minimumReleaseAge in pnpm-workspace.yaml gates trunk installs, and CLAUDE.md requires a fixed ARG version for all Node CLIs installed into the image.

Why the zod-to-json-schema pin: @gongrzhe/server-gmail-autoauth-mcp@1.1.11 has loose deps (zod-to-json-schema: ^3.22.1, zod: ^3.22.4). pnpm resolves zod-to-json-schema to the latest 3.25.x, which imports zod/v3 — a subpath that only exists in zod>=3.25. But zod resolves to 3.24.x (highest satisfying ^3.22.4 without breaking peer ranges). Result: ERR_PACKAGE_PATH_NOT_EXPORTED at import time. Pinning zod-to-json-schema to a pre-v3-subpath version avoids it. Re-check if you bump GMAIL_MCP_VERSION.

No TOOL_ALLOWLIST edit needed. container/agent-runner/src/providers/claude.ts derives the allow-pattern dynamically from each group's mcpServers map (Object.keys(this.mcpServers).map(mcpAllowPattern)), so registering gmail in Phase 3 automatically allows mcp__gmail__*. Earlier versions of this skill instructed a static TOOL_ALLOWLIST edit — that's now redundant.

Rebuild the container image

./container/build.sh

Must complete cleanly. The new pnpm install -g layer is ~60s first time (cached on rebuild).

Phase 3: Wire Per-Agent-Group

For each agent group that should have Gmail (ask the user — typically their personal DM and CLI agents, sometimes shared household agents), persist two changes to the central DB (data/v2.db): the mcpServers.gmail entry and an additionalMounts entry for .gmail-mcp. Both flow through materializeContainerJson on every spawn, so editing groups/<folder>/container.json by hand does not stick — that file is regenerated from the DB.

List groups, pick which ones get Gmail

ncl groups list

Register the MCP server

For each chosen <group-id>:

ncl groups config add-mcp-server \
  --id <group-id> \
  --name gmail \
  --command gmail-mcp \
  --args '[]' \
  --env '{"GMAIL_OAUTH_PATH":"/workspace/extra/.gmail-mcp/gcp-oauth.keys.json","GMAIL_CREDENTIALS_PATH":"/workspace/extra/.gmail-mcp/credentials.json"}'

Approval behaviour depends on where you run it: from inside an agent's container ncl write verbs are approval-gated (admin approves before it lands); from a host operator shell with full scope, it executes immediately. Either way, the response tells you which path it took.

Add the .gmail-mcp mount

There is no ncl groups config add-mount verb yet (tracked in #2395). Until that ships, edit the DB directly via the in-tree wrapper (scripts/q.ts — setup/verify.ts:5 codifies that NanoClaw avoids depending on the sqlite3 CLI binary, so don't shell out to it):

GROUP_ID='<group-id>'
HOST_PATH="$HOME/.gmail-mcp"
MOUNT=$(jq -cn --arg h "$HOST_PATH" '{hostPath:$h, containerPath:".gmail-mcp", readonly:false}')
pnpm exec tsx scripts/q.ts data/v2.db "UPDATE container_configs \
  SET additional_mounts = json_insert(additional_mounts, '\$[#]', json('$MOUNT')), \
      updated_at = datetime('now') \
  WHERE agent_group_id = '$GROUP_ID';"

Run from your NanoClaw project root (where data/v2.db lives). The $[#] placeholder is SQLite JSON1's append-to-end notation; it's \$-escaped so bash doesn't arithmetic-expand it before sqlite sees it. updated_at is ISO-string everywhere else in the schema, so use datetime('now') — not strftime('%s','now'), which would silently mix epoch ints into a column of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS strings.

Switch to ncl groups config add-mount once #2395 lands. Update this skill at that time.

Why the container path is relative: mount-security rejects absolute containerPath values. Additional mounts are prefixed with /workspace/extra/, so containerPath: ".gmail-mcp" lands at /workspace/extra/.gmail-mcp. The MCP server's GMAIL_OAUTH_PATH / GMAIL_CREDENTIALS_PATH env vars point at that absolute location inside the container.

Why this can't be groups/<folder>/container.json: post-migration 014-container-configs, materializeContainerJson in src/container-config.ts rewrites that file from the DB on every spawn. Anything hand-edited there is silently overwritten on next restart.

Phase 4: Build and Restart

pnpm run build

Run from your NanoClaw project root:

source setup/lib/install-slug.sh
launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/$(launchd_label)  # macOS
systemctl --user restart $(systemd_unit)              # Linux

Phase 5: Verify

Test from the wired agent

Tell the user:

In your <agent-name> chat, send: "list my gmail labels" or "search my inbox for invoices from last month".

The agent should use mcp__gmail__list_labels / mcp__gmail__search. The first call may take a second or two while the MCP server starts and OneCLI does the token exchange.

Check logs if the tool isn't working

tail -100 logs/nanoclaw.log logs/nanoclaw.error.log | grep -iE 'gmail|mcp'
# Per-container logs — session-scoped:
ls data/v2-sessions/*/stderr.log | head

Common signals:

• command not found: gmail-mcp → image wasn't rebuilt or PATH doesn't include /pnpm (should — ENV PATH="$PNPM_HOME:$PATH" in Dockerfile).
• ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/workspace/extra/.gmail-mcp/credentials.json' → mount is missing. Check ~/.config/nanoclaw/mount-allowlist.json includes a parent of ~/.gmail-mcp.
• 401 Unauthorized from gmail.googleapis.com → OneCLI isn't injecting. Check the agent's secret mode (onecli agents secrets --id <agent-id>) and that the Gmail app is connected (onecli apps get --provider gmail).
• Agent says "I don't have Gmail tools" → the gmail MCP server isn't registered in this group's mcpServers (re-run the ncl groups config add-mcp-server step in Phase 3 for that group and restart it), or the agent-runner image is stale (rebuild with ./container/build.sh, with --no-cache if suspicious).

Removal

1. For each group that had Gmail wired, remove the MCP server from the DB:

   ncl groups config remove-mcp-server --id <group-id> --name gmail
   

2. Remove the .gmail-mcp mount from the DB (no remove-mount verb yet — same #2395 dependency):

   pnpm exec tsx scripts/q.ts data/v2.db "UPDATE container_configs \
     SET additional_mounts = (SELECT json_group_array(value) FROM json_each(additional_mounts) \
                              WHERE json_extract(value, '\$.containerPath') != '.gmail-mcp'), \
         updated_at = datetime('now') \
     WHERE agent_group_id = '<group-id>';"
   

3. Remove the GMAIL_MCP_VERSION ARG and the pnpm install -g @gongrzhe/server-gmail-autoauth-mcp block from container/Dockerfile.
4. pnpm run build && ./container/build.sh && systemctl --user restart "$(. setup/lib/install-slug.sh && systemd_unit)".
5. (Optional) rm -rf ~/.gmail-mcp/ if no other host-side tool needs the stubs.
6. (Optional) Disconnect Gmail in OneCLI: onecli apps disconnect --provider gmail.

No TOOL_ALLOWLIST removal step — Phase 2 no longer edits it.

Notes

• Stub format is OneCLI-prescribed. The access_token: "onecli-managed" pattern with expiry_date: 99999999999999 tells the Google auth client the token is valid; OneCLI intercepts the outgoing Gmail API call and rewrites Authorization: Bearer onecli-managed to the real token. expiry_date: 0 (refresh-interception) is an alternative the OneCLI docs describe — both work but OneCLI's own migrate command writes the far-future variant, which is what this skill assumes.
• Scopes are set at OAuth connect time. If the agent needs scopes beyond what's currently connected (e.g. the user later wants calendar.readonly for combined email/calendar workflows), disconnect and reconnect Gmail in the OneCLI web UI with the expanded scope set.
• This is tool-only. Inbound email as a channel (emails trigger the agent) is a separate piece of work — it needs a src/channels/gmail.ts adapter that polls the inbox and routes to a messaging group. The pre-v2 qwibitai skill had this; it has not been ported to v2's channel architecture as of v2.0.0.

Credits & references

• MCP server: @gongrzhe/server-gmail-autoauth-mcp by GongRzhe — MIT-licensed.
• OneCLI credential stubs: pattern documented at https://onecli.sh/docs/guides/credential-stubs/gmail.md.
• Skill pattern: modeled on add-atomic-chat-tool and add-vercel.
• Addresses: issue #1500 (proxy Gmail/Calendar OAuth tokens through credential proxy) for the Gmail side.
• Related PRs: #1810 (pre-install Gmail/Notion MCP) overlaps on the "install the MCP server in the image" idea but bundles many unrelated changes; this skill is the focused OneCLI-native version.