google-contacts

Google Contacts

Agent-callable tools for Google Contacts, wrapping the Google People API. Create, read, update, and delete a person's contacts; search contacts by name, email, or phone; set or remove contact photos; create and manage contact groups (labels) and their membership; and browse the auto-saved "other contacts" surface. Every tool uses a single OAuth connection; capability is gated by the granted scope.

Independent, unofficial connector for Google Contacts. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google Contacts. "Google Contacts" is a trademark of its owner, used only to identify the service this connector works with.

When to use this

• Saving, finding, updating, or deleting a person's Google Contacts ("add Jane to my contacts", "what's Bob's email", "remove this contact").
• Organizing contacts into groups/labels and adding or removing members.
• Setting or removing a contact's photo.
• Finding someone the user has interacted with (e.g. emailed) but never explicitly saved — the "other contacts" surface — and promoting them into saved contacts.

Setup

This is an agentskills.io skill.

If the connector has not been installed as a skill yet, install it first with npx skills add zapier/connectors --skill google-contacts (or your harness's own skill-install mechanism), then continue here. Installing the skill copies these files, not dependencies. Before running the CLI, a local MCP server, or zapier-sdk auth commands, run npm install --omit=dev here once. Importing the published package as a dependency in your own project instead? That npm install already resolves everything — see references/use-as-sdk.md.

Want the actual repo source instead — to browse references/, run this connector's tests, or hack on it? See README.md for a scoped git clone.

The connector runs on Node.js 22.18+. Pick the reference that matches how you're running it, and load it before doing anything else:

You have...	Load
An MCP-aware client — tools may already be loaded (e.g. mcp__google-contacts__<tool>), or you can register a local server yourself (or guide the user to)	references/use-as-mcp.md
Terminal / subprocess access (you can run node)	references/use-as-cli.md
Only your own code, importing this package as a dependency	references/use-as-sdk.md
No tool access, no terminal, no ability to import this package — you write your own code that calls the Google Contacts API directly (e.g. a code-execution sandbox)	references/use-as-recipe.md

Scripts

All scripts use the single google-contacts connection.

Script	Script name	Connections	Description
scripts/createContact.ts	createContact	google-contacts	Create a contact from structured name, email, phone, address, and organization fields.
scripts/getContact.ts	getContact	google-contacts	Retrieve a single contact by resource name, with full field detail.
scripts/updateContact.ts	updateContact	google-contacts	Update a contact; each array sent replaces that whole field, omitted fields are untouched.
scripts/deleteContact.ts	deleteContact	google-contacts	Delete a contact from the account.
scripts/listContacts.ts	listContacts	google-contacts	List the account's contacts, paginated — the primary resourceName resolver.
scripts/searchContacts.ts	searchContacts	google-contacts	Search contacts by name, nickname, email, phone, or organization (prefix match).
scripts/updateContactPhoto.ts	updateContactPhoto	google-contacts	Set or replace a contact's photo from a base64-encoded image.
scripts/deleteContactPhoto.ts	deleteContactPhoto	google-contacts	Remove a contact's photo, reverting to the default avatar.
scripts/listContactGroups.ts	listContactGroups	google-contacts	List contact groups (labels), user and system — the contactGroupResourceName resolver.
scripts/getContactGroup.ts	getContactGroup	google-contacts	Get a single contact group, optionally with its member contact resource names.
scripts/createContactGroup.ts	createContactGroup	google-contacts	Create a new user contact group (label).
scripts/updateContactGroup.ts	updateContactGroup	google-contacts	Rename a user contact group (system groups cannot be renamed).
scripts/deleteContactGroup.ts	deleteContactGroup	google-contacts	Delete a user contact group (label), optionally with its member contacts.
scripts/modifyContactGroupMembers.ts	modifyContactGroupMembers	google-contacts	Add and/or remove contacts in a group without disturbing other memberships.
scripts/listOtherContacts.ts	listOtherContacts	google-contacts	List auto-saved "other contacts" (people interacted with but never saved).
scripts/searchOtherContacts.ts	searchOtherContacts	google-contacts	Search "other contacts" by name, email, or phone (prefix match).
scripts/copyOtherContact.ts	copyOtherContact	google-contacts	Promote an "other contact" into saved contacts, returning an editable contact.

Disambiguation & refusals

• Resolve names before writing. Before updateContact / deleteContact / modifyContactGroupMembers on a contact identified by name, call searchContacts (or listContacts) and count exact, case-insensitive name matches. One match → act on it; don't over-ask. Two or more that tie → stop, list the candidates with a distinguishing field (email or phone), and ask which one — never silently pick. The same rule applies to groups via listContactGroups.
• Editing a list field replaces it. updateContact replaces each array you send (e.g. emailAddresses) wholesale. To add a value without dropping the others, getContact first, append, then send the full array. For group membership, prefer modifyContactGroupMembers (element-level) over updateContact.
• Out of scope — decline, don't substitute. This connector does not do bulk/batch contact create-update-delete, Google Workspace directory lookups, or contact merge/dedupe. If asked for one of these, say it isn't supported and stop — do not call another tool and report it as done.
• No bulk operations — never loop to fake one. There is no batch endpoint. If asked to change, add, or delete a field across many or all contacts at once (e.g. "set everyone's company to Acme"), decline and explain it isn't supported — do not loop updateContact / deleteContact / modifyContactGroupMembers over multiple contacts to simulate a bulk operation. Acting on a single, explicitly-identified contact is fine; fanning out across the address book is not.

Auth

Every shape passes auth as one connection selector, not the secret — a [<resolver>:]<value> string. Every connector accepts zapier:<connection-id> (Zapier-managed auth — routes through Zapier's auth, retries, and governance layer); some also accept one or more direct-token resolvers (naming and count vary per connector) — check this connector's own resolvers rather than assuming. The <resolver>: prefix is optional; a bare value goes to the first resolver that claims it — a UUID-shaped bare value always claims zapier:. Each script declares the connections it needs and the resolvers each accepts. The exact syntax for passing a connection (and how to see this connector's resolver list) differs by shape — see the reference you loaded above.

Checking what's already configured first? Don't dump environment values to do it — env or env | grep <name> prints the value along with the name, leaking a live credential into the transcript if one is set. Check names only (env | cut -d= -f1 | grep -i <name>) or test a known name directly ([ -n "$VAR_NAME" ]).

No connection yet? Pick one — and follow the reference's own flow to obtain it; never just ask the user for a connection id or token as if they already have one memorized:

	Load
Pass the credential directly	references/use-without-zapier.md
Route it through a Zapier connection	references/use-with-zapier.md

Output format

Every script returns a { data, meta } envelope:

• data — the script's result (the shape its outputSchema declares; see the reference you loaded above for how to inspect a script's exact schema in your shape).
• meta.outputDataValidation — what validating data did:
  • { skipped: false, droppedPaths: null } — validated, nothing removed.
  • { skipped: false, droppedPaths: [...], instruction } — validated, but those paths were stripped from data: fields the script returned from the API that the outputSchema doesn't declare. If you need them, re-run with output validation skipped.
  • { skipped: true } — validation was bypassed; data is the raw, unchecked script output.

Reading dropped fields / skipOutputDataValidation. To receive the raw, unvalidated result, opt out of output validation (the exact syntax differs by shape — see the reference you loaded above). Input validation is never skipped.

Trimming the result / filterOutputData. To shrink a large result down to the fields you need, pass a jq expression that post-processes data (again, exact syntax per shape). The jq runs against data only, NOT the { data, meta } envelope, so write it rooted at data (run the script's --help — or your shape's equivalent — to see its output schema). The transformed value replaces data, meta is preserved, and the result is NOT re-validated against the output schema.

References

Load the matching reference file before working in that area:

Reference	Covers	Load it when
references/google-contacts-api-gotchas.md	Error codes, update replacement semantics, etag concurrency, search prefix matching + warmup, write propagation delay, resource name formats, contact group types, membership limits, other-contacts field restrictions, and pagination.	Before any tool call.