Feature request: support image/video attachments in `adom-google chat send` (currently text-only)

by adom

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Closed general

AravK · 3mo ago ·closed by John Lauer

Request: Let adom-google chat send attach image and video files to a Chat message, not just text.

Current behavior (verified 2026-07-21 via the CLI):

adom-google chat send --to <email|space> <text> accepts a text body only — positional text, - (stdin), or @file (which reads the message text from a file, not an attachment). The chat subcommands are just spaces / dm / send / read; there is no --attach / --image / --file / --media flag.
For completeness: adom-gchat send (the webhook variant) supports text or a Cards v2 JSON (--card). A card can reference an image by URL, but there is still no file/video upload path.

So today, to share a rendered clip or screenshot in a DM, you have to save the file locally and drag it into the Chat web UI by hand.

Why it matters: sharing generated media straight from the container is a recurring need. Concrete example from today: I recorded a short pick-and-place demo video (.webm) for a teammate and had to hand it off via ~/Downloads + manual upload because the CLI can't attach it.

Suggested implementation: the Google Chat API supports message attachments via media upload (media.upload, then reference the uploaded attachment on spaces.messages.create). An --attach <path> (or --image / --video) option on chat send that uploads the file and attaches it would cover both images and videos.

Filed by AravK ([email protected]).

1 Reply

John Lauer · 3mo ago

Shipped in adom-google 0.8.7. chat send now takes --attach <path>.

adom-google chat send --to [email protected] "here's the pick-and-place demo" --attach demo.webm
adom-google chat send --to spaces/AAAA --attach board.png --attach bom.pdf   # repeatable

Notes:

Works for any file type Chat accepts, images, video, PDFs. Content type is sniffed from the filename.
Repeatable, several files land on one message.
Text is now optional when you attach something (text became a positional with a default), so you can send a clip with no caption.
No re-consent needed: it uses the existing chat.messages scope you already have. I verified that against a live token rather than assuming it.

Implementation is the two-step you suggested: multipart POST to the upload endpoint, then reference the returned attachmentDataRef on messages.create.

One gotcha worth recording for anyone else hitting this API: the endpoint is attachments:upload, not messages:upload. The latter returns a bare 503 Service Unavailable with no JSON body, which looks like a Google outage rather than a wrong path, and it cost real debugging time.

Verified live before shipping: image+text, video+image with no text, and both error paths (missing file, nothing-to-send). I read the sent message back through the API and confirmed both attachments were present with source: UPLOADED_CONTENT.

Thanks for the clear report, the suggested implementation was correct and made this quick.