searching-documents-with-google-drive_skill

Overview

This skill searches, previews, and downloads documents from Google Drive using rclone. Google Docs are exported as Markdown by default for easy reading and downstream processing. Use the provided scripts to search by name or ID, handle shared files, and sync Drive content locally.

How this skill works

The skill wraps rclone commands in small shell scripts that perform search, download, and bulk sync operations against a remote named gdrive. It can search by query or path, download by path or file ID, export Google Docs to selectable formats (default: md), and perform dry-run previews before downloading. Advanced users can call rclone directly for JSON listing or sync with export format flags.

When to use it

• Find files or folders in a Google Drive remote from the command line
• Export Google Docs to Markdown for processing or publishing
• Download or sync Drive content to a local directory
• Download shared files that aren’t in your root drive (use --shared)
• Preview large downloads with a dry-run before executing

Best practices

• Ensure rclone is configured and the remote is named gdrive (run ./scripts/check_rclone.sh)
• Use dry-run (--dry-run) for large folders to avoid accidental massive downloads
• Prefer downloads by file ID when file names are ambiguous or duplicated
• Limit bulk downloads with --limit to control bandwidth and storage
• Choose export format explicitly for downstream use (md, docx, pdf, txt, html)

Example use cases

• Search for meeting notes: ./scripts/search_gdrive.sh "meeting notes"
• Export a Google Doc as Markdown: ./scripts/download_gdrive.sh "Documents/Report" ./output
• Download a shared folder with a filename pattern: ./scripts/download_gdrive.sh --shared --include "project*" ./output
• Sync a remote folder to local with Markdown exports: rclone sync gdrive:"Source" ./local --drive-export-formats md
• Preview what would be downloaded from a large folder: ./scripts/download_gdrive.sh "Large Folder" ./output --bulk --dry-run