I get better experience if I just copy-paste the sheet data into Gemini web. And IIRC copy-paste is just space "delimited" by default.
What is the practical difference between a "discovery service"+API and an MCP server? Surely humans and LLMs are better off using discovery service"+API in all cases? What would be the benefit of MCP?
I have done it many times, using the swagger.json as a "discovery service" and then having the agent utilize that API. A good OpenAPI spec was working perfectly fine for me all the way back when OpenAI introduced GPTs.
If we standardized on a discovery/ endpoint, or something like that, as a more compact description of the API to reduce token usage compared to consuming the somewhat bloated full OpenAPI spec, you would have everything you need right there.
The MCP side quest for AI has been one of the most annoying things in AI in recent years. Complete waste of time.
I consider it a good first attempt, but indeed hope for a sort of mcp2.0
Swagger/OpenAPI is "this is EXACTLY what the API does, if you don't do it like this, you will fail". If you change something, things will start falling apart.
Because of FOMO a lot of higher up decided that "we must do a MCP to show that we're also part of the cool kids" and to give an answer to their even-higher-up about "What are you doing regarding IA ?"
The project has been approved, a lot of time has been sunk into the project, so nobody wants to admit that "hmmm actually now it's irrelevant our existing API + a skill.md is enough"
I've seen that in at least 4 companies my friends work in, so I would be surprised if it's not something like that here too.
On the contrary claude code, in my experience, has been perfectly able to use `stripe` `gh` and to construct on the fly a figma cli (once instructed to do it).
Better this than a Google dashboard, or slopped together third party libs. I know Google says they don't support it, but they'll probably support it better than someone outside of Google can support it.
[1] https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2025/12/workspace-st...
Clever, but frustrating that they don’t bother to provide any docs on the actual commands this supports.
What I meant was 'yes', Google Workspace CLI appears to quite similar to 'gogcli', the CLI written for OpenClaw. Both provide CLI access to a broad range of Google services for both workspace and regular gmail accounts.
GAM, on the other hand, is an admin tool, and strictly for Google Workspace accounts.
[1] https://justin.poehnelt.com/posts/rewrite-your-cli-for-ai-ag...
Reading lots of comments about "MCP vs CLI" -- reminds me a bit of the "agent vs. script/app/rpa" debates. It's usually not one or the other, but rather, both.. or the right tool for the job (and that can shift over time).
Biggest complaint we have about MCP is bigger context windows and token spend. Tools do exist that address this. I have just one MCP endpoint with a half dozen tools behind it, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Github, Notion, and more. Uses tool search tool (ToolIQ) with tiny context footprint. Give it a whirl. https://venn.ai
Probably someone's hobby project or 20% time at best.