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16. LeanScale Google Drive AI System

Note: The video covers material not in the guide below — please watch in full.

Action Step

Complete this before moving on.

Download the Google Drive desktop app and get it installed. During onboarding, hit Skip twice — once on syncing photos, once on syncing documents. Do not let your local files sync up to Drive. Then open Finder, click into Google Drive on the left sidebar, go to Shared Drives, and right-click → Make Available Offline on every customer's internal folder you're working on (plus the LeanScale folder). Once that's done, open one of those folders in VS Code and confirm everything's local.

Comment in Slack

Post your answer in your onboarding channel.

What was your biggest takeaway(s) from this training?

Training Guide

If you've been at LeanScale a minute, you know we used to do all of our client work inside GitHub. We're moving that work to Google Drive. This training is the why, the how, and the new customer setup process.

(Let's start with why we're moving)

Why We Switched From GitHub​

GitHub works beautifully for code — you don't want your codebase auto-syncing every time you save a file. But knowledge work isn't code. With GitHub you have to remember to push and pull constantly, and the files live somewhere most of the team doesn't naturally browse.

AI changed the calculus. Your agent needs files local — anything in the cloud means an API call, which adds latency and makes the work slower and more brittle. Until now, the only way to get local files was GitHub.

The fix is the Google Drive desktop app. You get local files (which the AI needs) without having to remember to sync anything (which GitHub forces on you).

(The whole system hinges on one setting — let's look at it)

Stream Mode vs Mirror Mode​

The Google Drive desktop app runs in one of two modes:

Stream Files — everything stays in the cloud. What shows up in Finder is a symbol of the folder, not the folder itself. Click a file and then it downloads locally.

Mirror Files — full one-to-one. Everything in the cloud is also downloaded onto your machine.

We don't use Mirror at the global level. LeanScale's Drive is 3.79 TB. If you mirrored all of it, your laptop would explode.

The workaround: stay in Stream mode globally, but for any folder you want fully local, right-click → Make Available Offline. The cloud icon disappears, the folder is now fully downloaded, and you're effectively in mirror mode just for that folder.

That's the whole trick. Stream everywhere, mirror the folders you actually work in.

(Now here's what that unlocks)

What This Unlocks​

Open VS Code, point it at the offline-available client folder, and it behaves exactly like a GitHub repo — all the files are local, the AI can read them, you can work normally.

The difference: any change you make syncs automatically. No push, no pull. And it's multiplayer — if a teammate adds a file to that customer's folder, it shows up on your machine too. Same architecture benefits as GitHub, plus the team-collaboration benefits of Drive.

(But GitHub doesn't go away)

We Still Use GitHub — For Code​

GitHub stays in the stack for what it was built for: code deployments. Netlify and Vercel have one-to-one GitHub integrations, so anything we ship as an app gets deployed through a repo.

The split is simple: client and knowledge work lives in Google Drive. Code and apps live in GitHub. Don't mix the two.

(Now let's get you set up)

Setting Up Google Drive Desktop​

Search "Google Drive desktop app download," install it, and authenticate with your LeanScale account.

Critical: during onboarding it'll ask twice if you want to sync your local files up to Drive — once for photos, once for documents. Skip both. If you let it sync your local computer up, your whole machine slows down and you've made a mess.

Once installed, open Finder, click Google Drive on the left sidebar, and you'll see My Drive and Shared Drives. Go into Shared Drives and right-click → Make Available Offline on every customer folder you're working on.

One distinction to keep straight: the internal folders (e.g. Coactive-internal) are the Claude folders for client work. The non-internal folders (e.g. Coactive) are the ones shared with the customer. They're different things. The internal ones are always annotated as -internal in the Drive name.

(There's an automation running behind the scenes that you should know about)

The Transcript System​

Every internal customer folder has a Transcripts folder, and every 10 minutes new call transcripts drop into it automatically. That means when you open the folder in VS Code, your AI already has every call you've had with that client.

Behind the scenes: a Fireflies rule called the Transcript Warehouse catches every external meeting, sends it to Supabase, an edge function routes it through a transcript-approvals channel (Jake and Yasin are monitoring sensitivity for the first 30–45 days), and once approved, Google Cloud Platform posts it into the right Drive folder via a bot user.

You don't need to know the inner workings. What you do need to know: every customer folder needs a Transcripts folder, and the bot user has to be added to that Drive as a content manager. If transcripts ever stop showing up, that's the first thing to check.

(One more piece before the setup walkthrough)

Folder Architecture​

We're not fully standardized yet — we're watching what everyone does and consolidating over time. Right now there's a V2 template that John put together, sitting inside the LeanScale folder under client folder templates. Start from that.

As long as you have some structure, a Transcripts folder, and you're saving handoff and spec docs in sensible places as you work, you're fine. Yasin works out of a working log folder and just adds files one by one — there's no single right answer yet.

(Now the actual onboarding flow)

Setting Up a New Customer​

Inside Teamwork, there's a checklist called Pre-Onboarding Checklist Q4 '25. When you onboard a customer in Teamwork, apply that as a task list. The Google Drive piece is one of the steps. Here's that step end-to-end:

  1. In Google Drive → Shared Drives → New Shared Drive. Name it {Customer}-internal.
  2. Manage Members. Add the partners (Jake, Cam, Joe, Anthony), John, anyone else on the account, and the bot user for transcripts as a content manager. Turn off the notify-people toggle.
  3. Create a Transcripts folder inside.
  4. Back in Finder → Google Drive → Shared Drives → right-click the new folder → Make Available Offline.
  5. Open another Finder window (Command + N), go to the LeanScale folder → client folder templates → V2, copy everything, and paste it into the new customer folder. Skip the duplicate Transcripts folder.
  6. Open the customer folder in VS Code and you're ready to work.

(Last thing)

The LeanScale Folder​

Everyone on the team has commenter permission on the LeanScale folder — read-only, no edits. That's where shared templates and resources live, including the client folder templates you just copied from.

The longer-term plan was to push official skills through this folder too, but Claude just launched a plugin marketplace that may end up being the better path. More on that as it shapes up.