Connector · Business and support
A Gmail teammate in Slack that searches your mail and drafts the reply.
Chickpea gives a channel a named AI teammate that holds its own Gmail connection: a Gmail AI agent that answers in Slack rather than inside the mailbox. Ask it what a customer wrote last week, or to draft the reply that is nine days overdue. It works in the mailbox you signed it in to, and most people sign in with their own.
What people ask it.
The teammate is @revops, in #growth. Pick a scenario to watch it play.
| Thread | Last reply | From | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Renewal terms | Sep 8 | Northwind | Waiting on you |
| Security review questions | Sep 11 | Northwind | Waiting on you |
| Onboarding the new team | Sep 12 | You | Answered |
| Invoice for August | Sep 15 | Northwind | Answered |
| Q4 planning call | Sep 16 | You | Answered |
Find a thread and say what happened Read only
@revops pull my last five threads with Northwind from my inbox
@revops what did Northwind say about the renewal date, search my mail
Reads never need confirmation. The teammate searches with Gmail query syntax, the same
from:,after:, andhas:operators you type into the Gmail search box. One search returns at most ten messages, and bodies are left out unless the question needs them.What still needs an answer Read only
@revops what came in this week that I have not replied to yet
@revops which threads from customers have been sitting unread since Friday
A question like this is several searches, and the answer comes back as a list in the thread with the sender, the subject, and the date. Message text is untrusted content. An email that tells the teammate to do something is data, and the teammate treats it that way.
Draft the reply Applies at once
@revops draft a reply to Priya agreeing to Thursday at 2pm
@revops draft a note to the Northwind contact with the renewal dates we just agreed
A draft is a small reversible write, so it applies at once and lands in your Gmail drafts folder unsent. The capability takes one recipient address, a subject, and a body, and it cannot attach the draft to the original Gmail thread. Open Gmail, read it, change it, send it.
Send it Asks first
@revops send that draft to the Northwind contact now
@revops reply to Priya confirming Thursday at 2pm and copy Marco
Sending is consequential, so the teammate shows the recipients, the subject, and the body, then waits for a yes. Underneath the judgment sits a gate that does not consult the model: a send is refused unless the Slack message in front of it names that action. A send takes up to 50 addresses each in to, cc, and bcc.
On a schedule Applies at once
@revops every weekday at 8am Eastern, post what came in overnight that I have not answered
@revops every Monday at 9am Pacific, list last week’s threads with Northwind here
A schedule saves on the spot. It needs an explicit time zone, and "every weekday at 8am" without one is refused rather than guessed. Each run uses the Gmail connection of the member who asked, so a personal inbox digest stays personal.
Connect it
Five steps, from Admin or from Slack.
You sign in through a page Chickpea serves, never in Slack. The link the teammate posts is good for one action, for one teammate, for 24 hours.
- In Chickpea Admin, open the teammate, then Connections, find Gmail, and choose Connect. Or ask in Slack,
@revops connect my Gmail, and follow the link it posts. - Choose who uses it. Personal is the usual answer for a mailbox. Each member signs in as themselves, and a turn needs both the teammate’s connection and your Slack identity, so someone else’s personal Gmail is never in the room. Team is one shared mailbox that everyone who can use the teammate reads through, and it needs the Owner or Admin role.
- Choose Continue to sign in. A hosted Google sign-in opens in a second tab while Chickpea waits in the first, and the attempt lasts 30 minutes. You sign in with Google there, never in Slack. Read the permissions on that screen, because the grant can be wider than the capabilities Chickpea hands the teammate.
- Nothing to pick afterwards. Gmail selects no resource beyond the account, so the connection is ready as soon as sign-in finishes rather than sitting pending.
- Ask something small.
@revops what address are you signed in asis a good first question, because reading the mailbox profile is the lightest capability on the list.
A connection belongs to one teammate, so giving a second teammate Gmail means a second sign-in with its own consent. Two Gmail accounts on one teammate are two different mailboxes. If a request names neither, every Google account is withheld and the teammate asks which label to use, because a wrong guess is not undone by an apology in the thread.
A managed connector has no discovered tool list. The teammate is handed a fixed list of capabilities that Chickpea curates, rather than Google’s whole Gmail API. Four cover Gmail: read the mailbox profile, search messages with Gmail query syntax, create a draft that is never sent, and send a message. Labels, archiving, trashing, filters, forwarding rules, mailbox settings, and raw API access are all absent, so there is nothing to reach around the list with. The capability list is in the product source.
Beside Gmail
What the same teammate usually holds too.
Each is its own connection, granted to the teammate alone. All 37 connectors.
The thread that agreed a time, and the invite that follows from it
HubSpotWhat the customer wrote, beside what the deal record claims
AsanaA request in the inbox becomes a task with an owner and a date
ZendeskTickets in the queue on one side, the mailbox the escalation arrived in on the other
Questions people ask
How can I connect my email to Slack?
Two directions, and they are not the same thing. Slack’s own Gmail add-on moves a message out of the mailbox into a channel, so people can talk about it. A Chickpea teammate goes the other way. It sits in the channel, holds a Gmail connection, and reads the mailbox when someone asks it to. Nothing is forwarded and nothing is installed in Gmail.
Does it use Google's Gmail MCP server?
No. Gmail is a managed connector here, and nothing in it speaks MCP. Google does run one: its developer docs describe a Gmail MCP server at gmailmcp.googleapis.com, available through the Google Workspace Developer Preview Program, with setup pages for Google Antigravity and for Claude on Enterprise, Pro, Max, or Team plans. Google says it lets an AI client search emails, retrieve threads, list labels, create drafts, and label messages. That puts the mailbox in one person’s client. This puts it in a channel.
Is this Gemini in Gmail?
No, and Gemini keeps working as it does. Google describes Gemini in Gmail as a Summarize this email button on a thread, a Help me write icon in the compose window, drafts polished from rough notes, contextual Smart Reply, and a side panel for finding details buried in your inbox. Google says it comes with a Google One Pro or Ultra plan for personal use, or as part of your Google Workspace plan at work. Chickpea is an open source Slack app you deploy to your own Cloudflare account, not built by Google and not affiliated with it.
Can it send email without asking me?
Not on its own. Sending an email is a consequential external action, so confirmation is required unless the saved teammate instructions explicitly authorize that class of action. Under the judgment sits a gate that does not consult the model: during a Slack turn, any managed capability whose effect is not read is refused unless the current Slack message names that action. The match is on the action and its target, so permission to send one message is not permission to send another.
Can it delete, archive, or label messages?
No. Four capabilities reach Gmail, and only two of them write: create a draft, and send a message. There is no label, archive, trash, delete, filter, forwarding, or settings capability, and no raw API passthrough. Google’s own Gmail MCP server can label messages; this cannot. Ask it to clean up your inbox and it will tell you it has no way to.
Whose mailbox does it read?
The one that signed in. Personal is the normal choice for Gmail, and a personal account belongs to one member inside one teammate: runtime use needs both that connection and your Slack identity, so another member’s mailbox is not in the room. A team account is one shared mailbox that everyone who can use the teammate reads through, which is right for a shared support address and wrong for your own.
Do I still need Slack for Gmail?
Keep it if people share mail into channels. Google’s marketplace listing says Slack Technologies publishes the add-on and that it sends emails into Slack to discuss them with your teammates, with your own note alongside, attachments included, into a channel or a direct message. It pushes mail out. A Chickpea teammate posts nothing unprompted and pulls answers in. The two sit side by side and neither touches the other.
Is there a ChatGPT for Gmail?
Several products put a chat window on the mailbox, Google’s included, and this is not one of them. There is no add-on to install and nothing appears inside Gmail. Chickpea is a Slack app you deploy yourself, the teammate holds the mailbox as one connection among several, and every answer lands in the channel where someone asked for it.
What does bounded mean on this connector?
Limits written into the input schema rather than left to the model. One search returns at most ten messages and its query is capped at 2,000 characters. A subject is capped at 2,000 characters and a body at 100,000. A send takes at most 50 addresses each in to, cc, and bcc, and needs at least one recipient and either a subject or a body. Every result is capped at 256 KB before it goes back to the model.
Can it post a morning inbox digest?
Yes. Ask for it in the channel and name a time zone. The schedule saves on the spot and runs under the Gmail connection of whoever asked for it. Before each run Chickpea re-reads the teammate, the destination grant, and that connection, so a disconnected mailbox stops the digest with a named reason instead of posting something stale.
Try it
Give a channel a Gmail teammate.
One deploy into your own Cloudflare account, connect Slack, sign in to Gmail, ask. Apache 2.0, no seats, no metering.
Or run it on Node. The setup guide covers both.
Last checked
Facts on this page were checked against the product and Gmail's own pages on September 17, 2026. This page is also available as markdown at /connectors/gmail.md.