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Gws People

  • 26.5k installs
  • 30k repo stars
  • Updated July 22, 2026
  • googleworkspace/cli

gws-people is a CLI skill that wraps the Google People API for managing contacts, groups, and profiles in Google Workspace.

About

gws-people is a CLI skill that wraps the Google People API, enabling developers to manage contacts, contact groups, and people profiles programmatically. Use it when you need to create, update, search, or batch-process contacts in Google Workspace. It handles contact groups, directory people, and person metadata with automatic thread-safe mutation handling.

  • Google Workspace API wrapper for managing contacts
  • Batch operations for contact groups and people
  • Search and sync capabilities with contact profiles

Gws People by the numbers

  • 26,509 all-time installs (skills.sh)
  • +852 installs in the week ending Jul 28, 2026 (Skillselion tracking)
  • Ranked #30 of 690 Office & Documents skills by installs in the Skillselion catalog
  • Security screen: LOW risk (skills.sh audit)
  • Data as of Jul 28, 2026 (Skillselion catalog sync)
At a glance

gws-people capabilities & compatibility

Depends on Google Workspace API quotas

Capabilities
contact crud · bulk operations · directory search · group management
Works with
google drive
Pricing
Free
From the docs

What gws-people says it does

Google People: Manage contacts and profiles.
SKILL.md
gws people <resource> <method> [flags]
SKILL.md
Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
SKILL.md
npx skills add https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli --skill gws-people

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Listed on Skillselion
Installs26.5k
repo stars30k
Security audit3 / 3 scanners passed
Last updatedJuly 22, 2026
Repositorygoogleworkspace/cli

How do you manage Google Contacts from CLI?

Manage Google Workspace contacts and contact groups via CLI for automation and integration workflows.

Who is it for?

Developers wiring Google Contacts automation into agent workflows with the gws CLI and OAuth already configured via gws-shared.

Skip if: Gmail message operations, Google Chat spaces, or contact management without the gws binary and People API scopes.

When should I use this skill?

User asks to search Google contacts, create contact groups, batch update contacts, or list directory people via gws CLI.

What you get

Contact records, contact group memberships, directory people search results, and batch contact create or update API responses.

  • Contact management via CLI
  • Batch operations on groups and people
  • Search and directory sync capabilities

By the numbers

  • SKILL.md metadata version 0.22.5
  • Documents 3 top-level API resource families
  • Lists 7 contactGroups methods plus people and otherContacts operations

Files

SKILL.mdMarkdownGitHub ↗

people (v1)

PREREQUISITE: Read ../gws-shared/SKILL.md for auth, global flags, and security rules. If missing, run gws generate-skills to create it.
gws people <resource> <method> [flags]

API Resources

contactGroups

  • batchGet — Get a list of contact groups owned by the authenticated user by specifying a list of contact group resource names.
  • create — Create a new contact group owned by the authenticated user. Created contact group names must be unique to the users contact groups. Attempting to create a group with a duplicate name will return a HTTP 409 error. Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
  • delete — Delete an existing contact group owned by the authenticated user by specifying a contact group resource name. Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
  • get — Get a specific contact group owned by the authenticated user by specifying a contact group resource name.
  • list — List all contact groups owned by the authenticated user. Members of the contact groups are not populated.
  • update — Update the name of an existing contact group owned by the authenticated user. Updated contact group names must be unique to the users contact groups. Attempting to create a group with a duplicate name will return a HTTP 409 error. Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
  • members — Operations on the 'members' resource

otherContacts

  • copyOtherContactToMyContactsGroup — Copies an "Other contact" to a new contact in the user's "myContacts" group Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
  • list — List all "Other contacts", that is contacts that are not in a contact group. "Other contacts" are typically auto created contacts from interactions. Sync tokens expire 7 days after the full sync. A request with an expired sync token will get an error with an google.rpc.ErrorInfo with reason "EXPIRED_SYNC_TOKEN". In the case of such an error clients should make a full sync request without a sync_token.
  • search — Provides a list of contacts in the authenticated user's other contacts that matches the search query. The query matches on a contact's names, emailAddresses, and phoneNumbers fields that are from the OTHER_CONTACT source. IMPORTANT: Before searching, clients should send a warmup request with an empty query to update the cache. See https://developers.google.com/people/v1/other-contacts#search_the_users_other_contacts

people

  • batchCreateContacts — Create a batch of new contacts and return the PersonResponses for the newly Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
  • batchUpdateContacts — Update a batch of contacts and return a map of resource names to PersonResponses for the updated contacts. Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
  • createContact — Create a new contact and return the person resource for that contact. The request returns a 400 error if more than one field is specified on a field that is a singleton for contact sources: biographies birthdays genders names Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
  • deleteContactPhoto — Delete a contact's photo. Mutate requests for the same user should be done sequentially to avoid // lock contention.
  • get — Provides information about a person by specifying a resource name. Use people/me to indicate the authenticated user. The request returns a 400 error if 'personFields' is not specified.
  • getBatchGet — Provides information about a list of specific people by specifying a list of requested resource names. Use people/me to indicate the authenticated user. The request returns a 400 error if 'personFields' is not specified.
  • listDirectoryPeople — Provides a list of domain profiles and domain contacts in the authenticated user's domain directory. When the sync_token is specified, resources deleted since the last sync will be returned as a person with PersonMetadata.deleted set to true. When the page_token or sync_token is specified, all other request parameters must match the first call. Writes may have a propagation delay of several minutes for sync requests. Incremental syncs are not intended for read-after-write use cases.
  • searchContacts — Provides a list of contacts in the authenticated user's grouped contacts that matches the search query. The query matches on a contact's names, nickNames, emailAddresses, phoneNumbers, and organizations fields that are from the CONTACT source. IMPORTANT: Before searching, clients should send a warmup request with an empty query to update the cache. See https://developers.google.com/people/v1/contacts#search_the_users_contacts
  • searchDirectoryPeople — Provides a list of domain profiles and domain contacts in the authenticated user's domain directory that match the search query.
  • updateContact — Update contact data for an existing contact person. Any non-contact data will not be modified. Any non-contact data in the person to update will be ignored. All fields specified in the update_mask will be replaced. The server returns a 400 error if person.metadata.sources is not specified for the contact to be updated or if there is no contact source.
  • updateContactPhoto — Update a contact's photo. Mutate requests for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid increased latency and failures.
  • connections — Operations on the 'connections' resource

Discovering Commands

Before calling any API method, inspect it:

# Browse resources and methods
gws people --help

# Inspect a method's required params, types, and defaults
gws schema people.<resource>.<method>

Use gws schema output to build your --params and --json flags.

Related skills

Forks & variants (1)

Gws People has 1 known copy in the catalog totaling 6 installs. They canonicalize to this original listing.

How it compares

Use gws-people for Google Contacts CRUD and search; use gws-gmail-read when the task is reading email messages rather than contact records.

FAQ

Do I need to authenticate before running gws people commands?

Yes, read the gws-shared SKILL.md for auth setup and security rules. Run gws generate-skills to create prerequisites.

Can I batch create or update contacts?

Yes, use batchCreateContacts or batchUpdateContacts methods. Mutations for the same user should be sent sequentially to avoid latency and failures.

Is Gws People safe to install?

skills.sh reports 3 of 3 security scanners passed. Review the Security Audits panel on this page before installing in production.

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