gcloud-cli

name

gcloud-cli

description

Execute Google Cloud Platform operations using the gcloud CLI (and gsutil/bq where applicable). Use when the user wants to: authenticate with GCP, manage GCP resources, deploy applications, configure projects or IAM, view logs, run SQL/BigQuery, or interact with any GCP service from the command line. Triggers on phrases like "gcloud", "Google Cloud CLI", "deploy to GCP", "create a VM", "Cloud Run", "GKE cluster", "Cloud Storage bucket", "set GCP project", "service account", "Cloud Functions", "App Engine deploy", or any request to manage Google Cloud resources via command line.

gcloud CLI

Command Structure

gcloud [GROUP] [SUB-GROUP] COMMAND [FLAGS]

Examples:

gcloud compute instances list
gcloud run services deploy my-svc --image gcr.io/my-project/my-image
gcloud projects list

Configuration

# One-time setup
gcloud init

# Set active project
gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID

# Set default region/zone
gcloud config set compute/region us-central1
gcloud config set compute/zone us-central1-a

# View current config
gcloud config list

# Named configurations (switch between projects/envs)
gcloud config configurations create staging
gcloud config configurations activate staging

Authentication

# Interactive login (local dev)
gcloud auth login

# Application Default Credentials (SDK/code usage)
gcloud auth application-default login

# Service account key
gcloud auth activate-service-account SA_EMAIL --key-file=key.json

# Impersonate a service account
gcloud [COMMAND] --impersonate-service-account=SA_EMAIL

# Check who you're authenticated as
gcloud auth list

Output Formatting

--format=json          # Machine-readable
--format=yaml          # Human-readable structured
--format=table(col1,col2)  # Custom table columns
--format="value(name)" # Single field extraction

# Filtering
--filter="status=RUNNING"
--filter="name ~ '^prod-'"  # regex match
--sort-by=createTime
--limit=10

Useful Global Flags

Flag	Purpose
--project=PROJECT_ID	Override active project
--region=REGION	Override default region
--zone=ZONE	Override default zone
--quiet / -q	Skip confirmation prompts
--verbosity=debug	Debug output
--dry-run	Preview without executing (where supported)

Service Commands Reference

For service-specific commands (Compute Engine, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Storage, IAM, App Engine, Cloud Functions, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Artifact Registry), see references/services.md.

Common Patterns

Get resource details

gcloud RESOURCE describe RESOURCE_NAME [--region/--zone]

Wait for long-running operations

# Most commands support --async; poll with:
gcloud compute operations wait OPERATION_ID

Use --format=value() in scripts

PROJECT=$(gcloud config get-value project)
IMAGE_DIGEST=$(gcloud container images describe gcr.io/$PROJECT/app:latest --format="value(image_summary.digest)")

IAM policy binding pattern

gcloud RESOURCE add-iam-policy-binding RESOURCE_ID \
  --member="serviceAccount:[e-mail]" \
  --role="roles/ROLE"