Connecting Google Drive, step by step.

Why connect Google Drive · How a connector works

Your company must have created its own Google application (D90) - see Your Google application. Managed: an admin pastes it once for the whole company; each person then authorizes Drive for their own account.

The connected account must already have access to the files you want in its own Drive: the connector opens no permission, it inherits the ones that already exist.

Managed: each person clicks "Connect Google Drive" in their Sources; the Google window opens, consent covers read-only access, and the account shows connected on return. Self-host:

kastel connector gdrive connect <identity>

The identity is the person's slug in your directory (governance/identities.yaml). The command prints the Google authorization URL and stores the token once consent is given. Write access is never requested: the only permission granted is read.

My Drive and the shared drives of the connected account, one change cursor per drive: only files modified since the last pass are re-read. Text only comes in - a Google document, sheet or slide deck is read via a text export, a PDF goes through character recognition. Images and video are never read.

90-day default window at first sync (self-host: connectors.gdrive.history_days in kastel.config.yaml, 0 = no limit). A file that is deleted or whose sharing changes is reconciled on the next pass.

Managed: the Google Drive card in your Sources lists connected accounts. Self-host:

kastel connector gdrive sync

Runs one more pass and reports what was ingested, unchanged, or skipped.