Google Slides
Arcade.dev LLM tools for Google Slides
Google Slides Toolkit
The Google Slides toolkit connects Arcade to the Google Slides (and Drive) APIs, enabling LLMs to create, read, edit, comment on, and search presentations on behalf of a connected Google account.
Capabilities
- Deck creation and editing: Build presentations from scratch or apply batched, atomic edits — adding, removing, or restyling slides and elements; inserting or replacing text; setting speaker notes; reordering or duplicating objects — all in a single tool call.
- Template-based authoring: Derive new decks from an existing branded template, inheriting masters, layouts, and theme, with optional token replacement.
- Read and inspect: Retrieve a full addressable snapshot of any deck — object IDs, placeholder types, text, speaker notes, layout and master inventory — to target subsequent edits precisely.
- Thumbnails and visual review: Render any individual slide to an image URL for visual confirmation before sharing.
- Comments and lifecycle management: Post new comments or threaded replies at the file level, list paginated comment threads, and resolve or reopen threads with attributed lifecycle actions.
- Search, identity, and Drive access: Full-text search across the user's Drive presentations; retrieve the connected account's profile; generate a Google Drive file picker URL to grant per-file access when a file cannot be found or is access-denied.
OAuth
This toolkit uses OAuth 2.0 via Google. See the Arcade Google auth provider docs for setup details.
Secrets
ENABLE_GOOGLE_DRIVE_INLINE_PICKER_URL — Controls availability of the GenerateGoogleFilePickerUrl tool, which surfaces Google's first-party Drive file picker so users can grant per-file access to specific presentations. This secret is an API key (or configuration value) that enables the inline picker integration. To obtain it, you must configure an OAuth 2.0 client in the Google Cloud Console with the Drive Picker API enabled for your project, then use the resulting API key or client credential as this secret's value. The picker is only available when this secret is set; if it is absent, GenerateGoogleFilePickerUrl returns status: "unavailable" with a reason explaining why.
See Arcade tool secrets documentation for how to configure secrets, and manage them at https://api.arcade.dev/dashboard/auth/secrets.
Available tools(10)
| Tool name | Description | Secrets | |
|---|---|---|---|
Add a comment to a presentation, or reply within an existing comment thread.
Comments are file-level, not anchored to a slide; to reference a slide, name it in
the text. Pass reply_to_comment_id to post within that thread instead of starting a
new comment. | 1 | ||
Create a deck or apply a batch of edits to one, returning created object ids,
replace counts, and a fresh addressable snapshot.
Use this single tool for all deck construction and editing: add, delete, or restyle
slides and elements, insert and replace text, and brand a deck in one batch. Reorder
slides with an updateSlidesPosition request; duplicate a slide or element with a
duplicateObject request. To set speaker notes, insertText into a slide's
notes_object_id (surfaced per slide in the snapshot).
To add a slide into a specific branded layout, first read the deck and consult the
snapshot's layout inventory: each layout reports its placeholders (type, index, and
object id), so you can pick a layout that already carries the title/body/other
placeholders you intend to fill rather than guessing which layout holds what, and
address a specific placeholder in placeholderIdMappings (by {type, index} or by
layoutPlaceholderObjectId) even when a layout repeats a type. Read the snapshot to
discover the object ids later edits target.
The batch is atomic: one invalid request rejects the whole batch, so target object
ids that exist in the snapshot. Object ids you assign to new objects are validated
before the batch is sent. | 1 | ||
Derive a new on-brand deck from an existing branded deck, preserving its
masters, layouts, and theme, then optionally filling tokens.
Use this instead of building from scratch when the user wants a deck in their
company template; the new deck inherits the source's branding. | 1 | ||
Generate a URL where the user grants this app access to specific Drive files.
Check `status` first. "unavailable" is not an error: either this app already reaches
every presentation the connected account can open, so there is no per-file grant to
request, or the picker is not configured here. Either way `reason` explains it, no URL
exists, and a presentation that could not be read is one the account itself cannot
open. Do not retry it.
On "available", use this when a prior tool reported a file was not found or access was
denied and the user expects the file to exist; after the user completes the picker,
retry the prior tool. Opens Google's first-party Drive picker, not a sign-in prompt. | 1 | ||
Return an addressable snapshot of a deck: slide and element object ids,
placeholder types, text, speaker notes, and the layout and master inventory.
This is the read side of the read-edit loop: the object ids it returns are the
addresses create_or_edit_presentation targets. Each layout in the inventory
reports its placeholders with type, index, and object id, the identity a
createSlide placeholderIdMappings entry needs (by {type, index} or by
layoutPlaceholderObjectId), even when a layout repeats a placeholder type.
What this response leaves out is reported in words by next_step, which is empty only
when nothing was left out: read it before answering anything about slides it does not
contain. | 1 | ||
Render one slide to an image and return its content URL, for visually
confirming a deck looks right before sharing. | 1 | ||
List a page of comments and their replies on a presentation, newest first. | 1 | ||
Close (resolve) or reopen a comment thread on a presentation.
Posts an action reply on the thread, so the lifecycle change is attributed to the
connected account; the thread's existing comments and replies are preserved. | 1 | ||
Search the user's Drive for presentations, newest first by default.
Keyword matching is full-text: a keyword matches a deck's body content as well
as its title, so a deck can match on words that never appear in its title. A
keyword search that matches nothing returns an empty list (not an error).
An empty list is only a definitive no-match when next_step is empty. When next_step is
set, the listing was not walked to its end and the pages it did not reach may hold the
match, so do not report that no such presentation exists from that response alone. | 1 | ||
Return the connected Google account's profile (name, email, picture). | 1 |