Google Chat

Google Chat

Operate on the authenticated user's Google Chat workspace: rooms, group chats, direct messages, message history, and memberships.

Data Model

• Spaces — rooms, group chats, and DMs. Identified by resource names spaces/{id}; displayName is for humans only and is not a valid API target.
• Space types — SPACE (named room), GROUP_CHAT (multi-person; needs members when created), DIRECT_MESSAGE (1:1).
• Messages — posts scoped to one space; each has a resource name under that space. Thread replies share a thread resource.
• Memberships — roster entries (emails and membership resource names) for who belongs to each space.

Workflows

• Daily digest / recap — Enumerate relevant spaces → for each, list messages since a time boundary with a createTime filter → compose one summary post into a destination space. Scan spaces explicitly; there is no workspace-wide inbox search.
• Reply in thread — Continue a conversation with the thread resource name from an earlier message; omitting it starts a new top-level post.
• Recent activity — Prefer per-space message listing with RFC3339 cutoffs such as createTime > "2026-06-26T00:00:00Z". Cross-space text matching is substring-only and does not understand mail-style date operators.

Gotchas

• Resource names vs labels: API targets are always spaces/{id} plus message/thread names returned by list calls — never room titles or email subjects.
• No global search: Chat API v1 has no Gmail-style after: / from: syntax. Date-bounded history is per-space via message list filters.
• Pagination: Busy spaces need page_token loops; when summarizing many spaces, paginate each space and avoid unbounded parallel fan-out.
• Access limits: Reading thread history, editing or deleting messages, or creating spaces may fail when the connected identity only has list-and-send access — narrow to enumerate spaces and post new messages, or surface the upstream permission error verbatim.
• Creating spaces: GROUP_CHAT needs multiple member emails; duplicate displayName values and invalid member lists often return HTTP 400 with field-configuration hints from Google.