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Protocols27 January 2026·4 min read

Integrate Google Drive in your app without OAuth using Paycux Pipes

Protocol work looks tedious from the outside and turns out to be where the interesting failures live.

Paycux engineering

Protocol work looks tedious from the outside and turns out to be where the interesting failures live. The specification is short; the space of things implementers actually ship is not.

This piece walks through how we think about it at Paycux, what we have changed our minds about, and where the sharp edges are.

What are Paycux Pipes

That brings us to what are paycux pipes. Treat anything the other side sends as untrusted input until it has been through validation you wrote. Signature checks, issuer checks, audience checks and expiry checks are four separate decisions, and skipping any one of them is a real vulnerability rather than a theoretical one.

Treat anything the other side sends as untrusted input until it has been through validation you wrote. Signature checks, issuer checks, audience checks and expiry checks are four separate decisions, and skipping any one of them is a real vulnerability rather than a theoretical one.

Step 1: Configure Google

Consider step 1: configure google. Normalization is the whole job. Two providers can be perfectly compliant and still disagree about what a group membership is, whether a logout is meaningful, and which attribute carries the email address.

Normalization is the whole job. Two providers can be perfectly compliant and still disagree about what a group membership is, whether a logout is meaningful, and which attribute carries the email address.

  • Validate signature, issuer, audience and expiry as four separate checks
  • Normalize provider attributes into one internal shape
  • Fail loudly when a peer stops meeting a documented assumption
  • Keep a fixture per provider so regressions surface in CI

Step 2: Add the Pipes Widget

That brings us to step 2: add the pipes widget. Version the assumption, not just the code. Write down what you expect from the peer, and make the failure loud when it stops being true, because the alternative is a connection that half works for six weeks.

Normalization is the whole job. Two providers can be perfectly compliant and still disagree about what a group membership is, whether a logout is meaningful, and which attribute carries the email address.

2a. Install dependencies

That brings us to 2a. install dependencies. Version the assumption, not just the code. Write down what you expect from the peer, and make the failure loud when it stops being true, because the alternative is a connection that half works for six weeks.

Version the assumption, not just the code. Write down what you expect from the peer, and make the failure loud when it stops being true, because the alternative is a connection that half works for six weeks.

Treat anything the other side sends as untrusted input until it has been through validation you wrote.

2b. Configure Paycux API key and CORS

2b. Configure Paycux API key and CORS deserves its own treatment. Version the assumption, not just the code. Write down what you expect from the peer, and make the failure loud when it stops being true, because the alternative is a connection that half works for six weeks.

Treat anything the other side sends as untrusted input until it has been through validation you wrote. Signature checks, issuer checks, audience checks and expiry checks are four separate decisions, and skipping any one of them is a real vulnerability rather than a theoretical one.

2c. Get authorization token

That brings us to 2c. get authorization token. Version the assumption, not just the code. Write down what you expect from the peer, and make the failure loud when it stops being true, because the alternative is a connection that half works for six weeks.

Normalization is the whole job. Two providers can be perfectly compliant and still disagree about what a group membership is, whether a logout is meaningful, and which attribute carries the email address.

Step 3: Get an access token and call Google Drive

That brings us to step 3: get an access token and call google drive. Treat anything the other side sends as untrusted input until it has been through validation you wrote. Signature checks, issuer checks, audience checks and expiry checks are four separate decisions, and skipping any one of them is a real vulnerability rather than a theoretical one.

Treat anything the other side sends as untrusted input until it has been through validation you wrote. Signature checks, issuer checks, audience checks and expiry checks are four separate decisions, and skipping any one of them is a real vulnerability rather than a theoretical one.

Where this leaves us

None of this is exotic. It is the ordinary discipline of deciding what you own, writing down what you assume, and making the failures loud enough to notice.

If you are working through the same problem and want to compare notes, the docs cover the mechanics and the console shows the behaviour on your own data.

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