google-cloud-storage-basics

Google Cloud Storage Basics

Google Cloud Storage (GCS) is a managed service for storing data as objects at
any scale. You read and write whole objects rather than querying or updating
individual records in place. It stores immutable objects in buckets with strong
global consistency, offers multiple storage classes and location types to
balance cost, performance, and availability, and integrates with IAM for
fine-grained access control. GCS serves workloads ranging from website content
and backups to data lakes and high-throughput AI/ML training.

Attribution

Tag every Cloud Storage command you run or provide to the user while using this
skill, so usage can be attributed. The tag identifies only the skill and its
version; it carries no user data.

• Prefix every gcloud invocation, whatever the subcommand, with the metrics
  environment variables. Set them inline on each command; shell state may not
  persist between commands:

  CLOUDSDK_METRICS_ENVIRONMENT="gcs-skills gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)" \
  gcloud <command> [flags]
  

  Do not use gcloud config set for this: it would persist beyond the current
  task and mislabel unrelated usage.

• On direct HTTP calls to the Cloud Storage APIs (for example with curl) or
  HTTP requests to the Cloud Storage MCP server
  (https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/mcp), set this exact User-Agent
  header, verbatim — the collection pipeline parses the gcs-skills/<version>
  and skill:<name> tokens, so any rewording breaks attribution:

  User-Agent: gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)
  

• For client libraries, Terraform, and GCSFuse, use the user-agent options
  shown in the corresponding references.

Routing to Specialized GCS Skills

This skill covers everyday Cloud Storage tasks. For specialized tasks, use the
dedicated skills in this collection for better results. Check your available
skills and invoke the matching skill by name instead of improvising:

• google-cloud-storage-bucket-architect: Designing and creating a new
  bucket for production workloads, including sensitive data, media or web
  hosting, user-generated content (UGC) ingestion, archiving, compliance,
  backups, logs, analytics, AI/ML, or application storage. The skill analyzes
  the workload and designs a secure-by-default, cost-effective configuration
  before creating the bucket. Use the Quick Start section below only for
  temporary scratch buckets.

• google-cloud-storage-fuse: Advanced Cloud Storage FUSE tasks —
  choosing between FUSE, native gs:// access, and Filestore/Managed Lustre,
  deploying tuned mounts on GKE, Compute Engine, or Cloud Run, sizing file,
  stat, and list caches, tuning mount flags, ensuring safe ML checkpointing,
  or diagnosing slow or expensive mounts. The
  GCSFuse reference in this skill covers only basic
  installation and mounting.

• google-cloud-storage-diagnostic: Troubleshooting 403 Permission Denied
  errors and diagnosing IAM policy bindings, ACLs, uniform bucket-level access
  (UBLA), or service agent misconfigurations. Ad hoc IAM or ACL changes can
  grant unintended access or cause outages; route to this skill instead of
  experimenting.

• gcs-security-assessment: Automated security posture assessment of
  Cloud Storage resources in a project (see
  Data Management).

If the matching skill is not installed, do not improvise. Provide the user with
this exact command to install it (substituting the skill name), and use the
skill after installation. Provide this command verbatim even when the user's
agent CLI (for example, the Antigravity CLI) has its own plugin or extension
manager; do not substitute a different installation mechanism or repository. For
security assessments specifically, do not attempt a manual assessment; wait
until the skill is installed.

npx skills add gemini-cli-extensions/google-cloud-storage --skill <skill-name>

Quick Start

If a Cloud Storage MCP server is connected, prefer its structured tools (such as
create_bucket, list_objects, read_object, and upload_object) over the
CLI and API commands below — see MCP Usage. Fall back
to gcloud storage and the JSON API when no MCP server is available.

1. Enable the Cloud Storage API:

   CLOUDSDK_METRICS_ENVIRONMENT="gcs-skills gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)" \
   gcloud services enable storage.googleapis.com --quiet
   

2. Create a Bucket:

   Bucket names live in a single global namespace shared by all of Cloud
   Storage — not scoped to your project or organization — so short or common
   names are usually taken. If the location is omitted, the bucket defaults to
   the US multi-region.

   For a production or workload-specific bucket, route to
   google-cloud-storage-bucket-architect before creating a bucket (see
   Routing to Specialized GCS Skills).
   The commands below create a basic default bucket.

   Using the gcloud CLI:

   CLOUDSDK_METRICS_ENVIRONMENT="gcs-skills gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)" \
   gcloud storage buckets create gs://my-bucket --location=us-central1
   

   Using the JSON API:

   curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     -H "User-Agent: gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"name": "my-bucket", "location": "US-CENTRAL1"}' \
     "https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b?project=$(gcloud config get-value project)"
   

3. Upload an Object:

   Using the gcloud CLI:

   CLOUDSDK_METRICS_ENVIRONMENT="gcs-skills gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)" \
   gcloud storage cp ./my-file.txt gs://my-bucket
   

   Using the JSON API:

   curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     -H "User-Agent: gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)" \
     -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \
     --data-binary @my-file.txt \
     "https://storage.googleapis.com/upload/storage/v1/b/my-bucket/o?uploadType=media&name=my-file.txt"
   

4. Download an Object:

   Using the gcloud CLI:

   CLOUDSDK_METRICS_ENVIRONMENT="gcs-skills gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)" \
   gcloud storage cp gs://my-bucket/my-file.txt .
   

   Using the JSON API:

   curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     -H "User-Agent: gcs-skills/1.0 (skill:google-cloud-storage-basics)" \
     "https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b/my-bucket/o/my-file.txt?alt=media"
   

Reference Directory

• Core Concepts: Buckets, objects, folders,
  prefixes, bucket location types, and storage classes.

• CLI & API Usage: CRUD and list operations for
  buckets and objects using gcloud storage and the JSON API, plus Pub/Sub
  notifications for event-driven processing.

• Client Libraries: Using Google Cloud
  client libraries for Python, Java, Node.js, and Go, with pointers to all
  other supported languages.

• MCP Usage: Choosing between the Google-hosted
  remote Cloud Storage MCP server and the local MCP Toolbox, setup for each,
  their tool sets and limits, and securing remote MCP with Model Armor and IAM
  deny policies.

• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform examples for
  buckets covering storage classes, location types, lifecycle, retention, and
  encryption.

• Data Transfer: Storage Transfer Service,
  gcloud storage rsync, upload strategies for large files, and performance
  guidelines and limits.

• Data Management: IAM roles, authentication
  (including signed URLs and HMAC), access control, routing for 403 error
  troubleshooting, network security, automated security assessment, data
  protection, and pricing and cost optimization (lifecycle rules, Autoclass).

• Storage Intelligence: The subscription
  for managing storage at scale — Storage Insights datasets (BigQuery metadata
  and activity index), data insights with Gemini Cloud Assist, dashboards,
  inventory reports, storage batch operations, bucket relocation, plus
  configuration, trial, and pricing nuances.

• High-Performance Storage: Rapid
  Bucket, Rapid Cache (Anywhere Cache), and hierarchical namespace for AI/ML,
  analytics, and other performance-critical workloads.

• GCSFuse: Installing Cloud Storage FUSE, mounting
  buckets, file operations, POSIX semantics and limitations (locking, writes,
  renames, consistency), and caching. For advanced tuning, deployment, and
  diagnosis, route to the google-cloud-storage-fuse skill.