How to connect Google Slides with Claude Code (5 steps)

Developers generate presentations constantly: sprint retrospectives, incident postmortems, architecture reviews, release summaries.

The content for all of them already exists in commits, tickets, metrics dashboards, and pull requests. But turning that content into slides means opening a browser, copying it over manually, and formatting it by hand. None of that process touches Claude Code.

To help your developers read and generate slide content without leaving the terminal, we'll show you how to connect Google Slides with Merge Agent Handler's Google Slides MCP server.

How it works

Merge Agent Handler sits between Claude Code and the Google Slides API. You configure a Tool Pack and Registered User in Merge Agent Handler, which generates a unique MCP URL. Claude Code connects to that URL over HTTP and uses an API key (generated in Merge Agent Handler) for authentication.

Here's the connection config before you substitute your specific values:

claude mcp add 
--transport http --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
agent-handler
"https://ah-api.merge.dev/api/v1/tool-packs/YOUR_TOOL_PACK_ID/registered-users/YOUR_REGISTERED_USER_ID/mcp"

Claude Code sends requests to that MCP URL, and Merge handles OAuth token management and API calls to Google Slides on the backend. You don't store Google credentials locally or manage token refresh yourself. Merge handles both.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, you'll need the following:

• A Merge Agent Handler account
• Claude Code installed (run claude --version to confirm)
• A Google account with access to the presentations you want to connect

Related: How to integrate with the Google Calendar MCP via Claude Code

1. Create a Tool Pack

Log into Merge Agent Handler and navigate to Tool Packs. Click Create Tool Pack and give it a name tied to your use case, like Slides deck generator.

Under connectors, select Google Slides and choose which tools to enable.

For read-heavy workflows, such as pulling slide content, listing presentations, or reading speaker notes, enabling presentation retrieval and slide listing covers the core use cases. Add write tools like create_presentation or add_slide if your agent needs to generate or update decks directly.

Save the Tool Pack. You'll return here in step 4 to copy your MCP URL.

2. Add a Registered User

Inside your Tool Pack, create a Registered User. This is the identity context under which your agent operates: the Google account it acts on behalf of when calling the Slides API.

Give it a name that maps to your environment, like dev-local or your own name. Once created, Merge generates a unique MCP URL scoped to this user.

Related: How to use the Gamma MCP in Claude Code

3. Authenticate Google Slides

From the Registered User detail page, click Add Connector and select Google Slides.

This starts a standard Google OAuth flow. Sign in with the Google account that has access to the presentations you want Claude Code to reach, and grant the requested permissions.

Once the OAuth flow completes, Merge stores and manages the access token. You won't need to re-authenticate unless you revoke access.

4. Gather your credentials

You need two things before configuring Claude Code:

1. MCP URL: found on the Tool Pack detail page under the Registered User you just created. It looks like this:

‍https://ah-api.merge.dev/api/v1/tool-packs/{TOOL_PACK_ID}/registered-users/{REGISTERED_USER_ID}/mcp

2. API key: found in Settings > API Keys in your Merge Agent Handler dashboard. Create one if you don't have one yet.

Keep both handy for the next step.

5. Configure Claude Code with Google Slides

Run the following command in your terminal, substituting your actual MCP URL and API key:

claude mcp add 
--transport http --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
agent-handler
"https://ah-api.merge.dev/api/v1/tool-packs/YOUR_TOOL_PACK_ID/registered-users/YOUR_REGISTERED_USER_ID/mcp"

Verify the connection registered with the command claude mcp list. agent-handler should appear in the output with a connected status.

To confirm the connector is accessible, open a Claude Code session and run a command like "Find my Q2 Engineering Retrospective deck and summarize the key points from each slide."

You should see an output that looks something like the following:

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Google Slides MCP FAQ

In case you have more questions on setting up and using the Google Slides MCP in Claude Code, we've addressed several more commonly-asked questions below.

What can you do once the Google Slides MCP is connected to Claude Code?

With Google Slides connected, Claude Code can:

• Read slide content: retrieve the text and structure of any presentation without opening a browser or copy-pasting content into context

• List presentations: browse available decks in your Google Drive to find the right file before querying or updating it

• Create presentations: generate a new deck from scratch based on structured input, such as a sprint summary, a list of incidents, or a set of architecture decisions

• Add and update slides: append new slides to an existing deck or modify the content of specific slides when new information is available

• Read speaker notes: surface the notes attached to each slide, useful when an agent needs the full context behind a slide's content

• Cross-reference presentation content: pull slide data alongside other connected tools, such as combining a Jira sprint board with an existing retro deck to generate a draft of what happened this week

Why use Merge Agent Handler vs. a self-hosted Google Slides MCP server?

You can build a self-hosted MCP server that calls the Google Slides API directly. For a solo developer generating decks from their own Google account, that's a straightforward setup: configure OAuth credentials, write tool schemas for the operations you need, and wire it to Claude Code.

The setup gets complicated when more than one person needs access, or when your presentations contain sensitive content.

Google OAuth credentials stored locally carry access to everything the account can reach across Drive and Slides, not just the specific decks you intend to expose. There are no tool-level controls to limit an agent to read-only access or prevent it from creating or modifying presentations outside the intended scope.

At team scale, credential management becomes another problem. Each developer with their own local OAuth setup means separate tokens to rotate, no central visibility into what agents are reading or writing, and no clean way to revoke access when someone leaves.

Merge Agent Handler adds a control layer on top.

You define exactly which tools each Tool Pack exposes, so a read-only summarization agent never gets access to create_presentation or add_slide. Each Registered User has isolated credentials, so revoking one developer's access doesn't affect anyone else. Every tool call is logged with the tool name, inputs, and response metadata.

Why connect Google Slides to Claude Code?

Most engineering teams produce the same set of recurring presentations: sprint retros, release notes, incident postmortems, architecture decision records. The content for all of them already exists in tickets, commits, dashboards, and logs. The work is in pulling that content together and formatting it, which is manual, slow, and disconnected from the terminal.

Connecting Google Slides via MCP closes that gap.

Developers can ask Claude Code to read an existing deck, identify gaps, and append new slides based on data from other connected tools. An agent can pull this week's closed Jira tickets, match them against an existing retro template, and generate a draft deck without a single browser tab. For engineering teams that treat documentation and internal communication as part of the development workflow, that's a direct reduction in the time between "work is done" and "slides are ready."