Publish Markdown to Google Docs

Quickly publish markdown notes to styled Google Docs using pandoc and a Word template.

When to use

• User wants to publish a markdown note to Google Docs
• User says “publish to Google Docs”, “create a Google Doc from markdown”, or “push this to Drive”
• User wants to apply consistent branding/styling to documents before sharing

Prerequisites

1. pandoc – Must be installed (see self-healing below)
2. A Word template (.docx) with desired styles
3. OAuth credentials for Google Drive (one-time setup)

Self-healing: Installing pandoc

If pandoc is not installed, ask the user how they would like to install it:

Preferred option (pixi):

pixi global install pandoc

Alternative options by platform:

Use the question tool to present these options if pandoc is missing.

Workflow

Step 1: Check pandoc availability

which pandoc && pandoc --version

If not found, prompt user to install (see self-healing above).

Step 2: Convert markdown to docx with pandoc

pandoc INPUT.md --from markdown --to docx --reference-doc=TEMPLATE.docx --output=OUTPUT.docx

The --reference-doc flag applies the template’s styles (fonts, headings, margins) to the output.

Step 3: Upload to Google Drive

uv run scripts/upload_to_drive.py --input OUTPUT.docx --title "Document Title"

Returns a shareable Google Docs link.

Example

# Convert and upload
pandoc "proposal.md" --from markdown --to docx --reference-doc="template.docx" --output="proposal.docx"
uv run scripts/upload_to_drive.py --input "proposal.docx" --title "My Proposal"

Scripts

upload_to_drive.py

Uploads a docx file to Google Drive using OAuth2 user authentication.

Usage:

uv run scripts/upload_to_drive.py --input /path/to/file.docx --title "Document Title"

Setup (one-time):

1. Go to https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials
2. Create an OAuth 2.0 Client ID (Desktop app)
3. Set environment variables:

export GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID='your-client-id.apps.googleusercontent.com'
export GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET='your-client-secret'

Features:

• Opens browser for Google login on first run
• Saves credentials locally for future use
• Use --logout to remove saved credentials
• Use --no-share to keep document private

Template Style Requirements

For best results, your template should have these styles defined:

Notes

• Pandoc handles all markdown correctly: lists, bold, italic, tables, code blocks, links
• The template’s fonts, colors, and margins are preserved via --reference-doc
• Images from the template are not copied – this only applies styles