💡 New script: chat-channel-digest (Google Chat Spaces weekly activity summary & action item extraction)

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Summary

A Google Apps Script that monitors selected Google Chat Spaces, summarizes weekly activity using Gemini, extracts action items and decisions, and delivers a structured digest email — following the proven calendar-to-briefing-doc architecture pattern. Opens an entirely new Workspace surface for the project, covering Google Chat for the first time.

Market Signal

Google Workspace is rapidly elevating Chat as a first-class collaboration surface. The Workspace MCP server (May 2026) adds Chat with search, read, and reply capabilities. Workspace Studio added Chat automation steps in September 2026. No open-source, free, browser-deployable Chat digest tool exists — n8n has Chat nodes but requires self-hosting; Zapier charges per-zap. The competitive landscape (Zapier, Make, IFTTT) treats Chat as just another connector, not a deep integration — leaving room for a purpose-built digest that understands conversational context.

User Signal

The project has 34 existing ideas across Gmail (10+), Calendar (5+), and Drive (4+) — but zero Chat scripts. This is a significant blind spot: Chat Spaces are where small-team decisions, action items, and context live. The calendar-to-briefing-doc script proves strong user appetite for periodic digest emails. Cross-app-weekly-review (#516) acknowledges the multi-app need but does not specifically address Chat content extraction.

Technical Opportunity

The architecture pattern is proven and directly reusable: calendar-to-briefing-doc uses hourly trigger → schedule-in-config → content fetching → Gemini formatting → email delivery. The Chat API (via UrlFetchApp calling the Chat REST API, or the emerging ChatApp GAS service) provides Spaces listing, message history, and membership enumeration. The dual-layer GAS/Node pattern with dependency injection supports full testability. The deploy page's SCRIPT_CATALOG already handles multi-script configuration — adding a chat-channel-digest entry follows the established extensibility pattern.

Assessment

Dimension	Score	Rationale
Feasibility	high	Proven architecture (calendar-to-briefing-doc), Chat API available, Gemini integration demonstrated in gmail-ai-classifier
Impact	high	Opens entirely new Workspace surface; no existing Chat ideas in backlog; addresses small-team collaboration gap
Urgency	med	Chat adoption growing but not blocking existing users; market window open as Studio Chat steps are brand new

Adversarial Review

Strongest objection: Google Chat may ship its own built-in AI summarization, making a standalone digest script redundant. Chat adoption outside enterprise Workspace plans is limited, narrowing the target audience beyond personal users.

Rebuttal: Built-in Chat summaries are ephemeral and don't extract action items into persistent, archivable formats or integrate with Tasks/Sheets. The script targets small teams (2-10 people) sharing a Workspace plan — the project's natural expansion audience beyond solo users. The gmail-ai-classifier already demonstrates multi-account household deployment, proving the project serves beyond strictly personal use. Even if Google ships native summarization, a structured weekly digest email with extracted action items serves a different purpose than in-app ephemeral summaries.

Suggested Next Step

Prototype a minimal chat-channel-digest script: list messages from a single Chat Space for the past 7 days and email a plain-text summary, following the calendar-to-briefing-doc dual-layer architecture (code.gs → src/index.js). Add Gemini-powered summarization and action item extraction as a second iteration.