gws-sheets-read

What This Skill Does

The gws-sheets-read skill allows the OpenClaw AI agent to interface directly with your Google Sheets data. By leveraging this skill, the agent can perform read-only operations on specified spreadsheets, pulling values from individual cells, specific ranges, or entire sheets. This capability effectively bridges the gap between static spreadsheet data and dynamic AI processing, enabling the agent to ingest tabular data, analyze cell content, or summarize information held within your Google Workspace environment without needing to open the browser or manually export CSV files. The skill relies on the Google Sheets API, ensuring reliable data retrieval while maintaining strict adherence to the authentication and security protocols defined in the shared gws-shared module.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, use the OpenClaw CLI tool. Ensure you have the necessary Google Workspace credentials configured as per the global documentation. Execute the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/googleworkspace-bot/gws-sheets-read

Once installed, confirm the installation by running gws --help to ensure the sheets command group is available. If you encounter authentication issues, refer back to the prerequisites in ../gws-shared/SKILL.md to verify your OAuth scope and token status.

Use Cases

This skill is highly effective for automating data-driven workflows. Common scenarios include: extracting project status updates from a tracker to generate summary reports, reading customer contact information to prepare outreach sequences, or pulling financial data from a ledger to feed into an analytical prompt for trend forecasting. Because it supports range-based queries, you can precisely target relevant data without overloading the AI context window.

Example Prompts

1. "OpenClaw, read the Q3 sales figures from spreadsheet 1abc123 in the range 'Summary!B2:D10' and tell me the total revenue."
2. "Check the 'Tasks' sheet in my project tracker spreadsheet (ID: 1abc123) and list all rows where column C is marked as 'Pending'."
3. "Summarize the feedback data located in 'Sheet1' of the spreadsheet with ID 1abc123 to highlight the top three common complaints."

Tips & Limitations

This skill is strictly read-only, which provides a safety buffer against accidental data modification. For optimal performance, always specify the narrowest possible range to reduce latency and token usage. Remember that permissions are tied to your personal Google account; ensure the target spreadsheet is shared with the account configured in your gws environment. If you require complex data manipulation or write operations, consider pairing this with other gws-sheets skills.