In this first look at Google Workspace Flows (aka Workspace Studio/Flows), I did a proper blind trial—one hour, zero prep—because it literally just landed in our account. I brought in automation expert Gail Breton (Authority Hacker) to sanity-check what Google’s building here versus tools like Zapier/Make and especially n8n. The big “Google win” is it’s native: you’re clicking inside Workspace, not wrestling with Google APIs (which, honestly, can be a pain), and you can use Gemini-style AI steps without thinking about token/API fees. We built an AI-powered inbox triage flow: new Gmail arrives → AI decides if it needs urgent attention → if yes, it pings me in Google Chat with a summary and a link; if not, it labels it (I used an “AI filtered” label) and attempts to archive it. We also talked security: prompt injection is real, so I’m careful about letting automations send emails back or read everything—triage first, and keep risky actions locked down. Then we explored integrations like Asana: it can push actions (create tasks/comments) but it can’t really “read” Asana context yet, so it’s not a deep two-way brain. Finally, I started prototyping a Meet transcript workflow (Drive folder trigger → detect transcript → run through my custom Gem → post to Chat), which is exactly the kind of small-business productivity playbook I’m excited to operationalize in Workspace.