mcp-google-forms: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md — mcp-google-forms

MCP server for the Google Forms API v1 (TypeScript, stdio). Mixed read/write: tools cover form CRUD, item/question management, publishing, read-only responses and Pub/Sub watches; raw_request is the escape hatch. The server talks to https://forms.googleapis.com with a Bearer token; the token is minted from an OAuth2 refresh token via https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token (or a static GOOGLE_FORMS_ACCESS_TOKEN, mostly for testing). Responses can only ever be read — the API has no submit endpoint.

Commands

npm run dev        # run from source (tsx watch)
npm test           # unit tests + dist smoke, no network
npm run typecheck  # types for src + tests
npm run build      # emit dist/
npm run smoke      # live READ-ONLY check (refresh-flow creds; optional form id argv/GOOGLE_FORMS_SMOKE_FORM_ID)

Architecture

• src/config.ts — env → config. Credentials: either the refresh triple GOOGLE_FORMS_CLIENT_ID + GOOGLE_FORMS_CLIENT_SECRET + GOOGLE_FORMS_REFRESH_TOKEN (all three or ConfigError incomplete_oauth_config) or GOOGLE_FORMS_ACCESS_TOKEN; optional GOOGLE_FORMS_API_BASE, GOOGLE_FORMS_TIMEOUT_MS, GOOGLE_FORMS_MAX_RETRIES. No credentials at all is NOT an error: the fields stay undefined and the server starts degraded. Also home to CredentialsError / MISSING_CREDENTIALS_MESSAGE (opens with the historical startup error verbatim, then names the variables and the restart) and hasCredentials().
• src/client.ts — all HTTP and all wire mapping. Token lifecycle (cache until ~60s before expiry, dedupe concurrent refreshes, one forced re-mint + replay on 401); request() resolves the path against the base and rejects foreign origins (SSRF guard), enforces an AbortController timeout that also covers reading the body, retries 429 always but 5xx/network errors only for GET — replaying a write after an ambiguous failure would duplicate it — and throws GoogleFormsError(status, body). Typed per-endpoint methods build the batchUpdate requests and computed updateMasks; buildQuestionItem() maps the normalized question vocabulary (text|paragraph|radio|checkbox|dropdown|scale|date|time|rating) to the wire Question union.
• src/tools/forms.ts — create_form (chains setPublishSettings when publish is set), get_form, update_form_info, update_form_settings, set_publish_settings. src/tools/items.ts — add_question, update_question, delete_item, move_item. src/tools/responses.ts — list_responses, get_response (read-only). src/tools/watches.ts — manage_watches (create/list/delete/renew). src/tools/raw.ts — raw_request (GET/POST/DELETE). src/tools/util.ts — ok/fail, the four annotation presets (READ_ONLY/WRITE/UPDATE/DESTRUCTIVE) and shared zod schema factories (formIdSchema, rfc3339Timestamp, itemIndexSchema).
• src/index.ts — wires every register* into the McpServer. loadConfigOrDegraded() catches ConfigError, pings startup_failed (fire-and-forget) and degrades the config to "no credentials"; an unconfigured start prepends UNCONFIGURED_PREFIX — plus Configuration problem: <message> when a ConfigError was caught — to the initialize instructions, and oninitialized sends server_start for a configured install or unconfigured_start (with the reason) otherwise.
• src/telemetry.ts — anonymous usage pings (ids/names/versions only, never data or arguments; fire-and-forget, must never block or throw; opt-out ASKADS_TELEMETRY=0). server_start means "a usable install started"; unconfigured_start is a degraded start and startup_failed a malformed config caught at load — both carry a reason from a closed vocabulary (missing_credentials, incomplete_oauth_config) — never a variable's name or value.