What problem does it solve? Working with Google Cloud Storage involves many surfaces — the gcloud CLI, JSON and XML APIs, client libraries, Terraform, and MCP servers — each with different syntax, authentication patterns, and feature constraints. This Skill provides accurate, up-to-date operational guidance for storing, retrieving, securing, and managing objects in GCS buckets without guessing at commands or misconfiguring retention, access control, or storage classes. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Bucket and Object Operations: Create buckets, upload, download, copy, and delete objects using gcloud storage, the JSON API, or client libraries for Python, Java, Node.js, and Go. - Security and Data Protection: Configure IAM roles, signed URLs, uniform bucket-level access, public access prevention, soft delete, versioning, retention locks, and encryption options including CMEK. - Cost and Performance Optimization: Apply lifecycle rules, Autoclass, storage classes, Rapid Cache recommendations, and high-performance options like Rapid Buckets and hierarchical namespace for AI/ML workloads. - Use Case: A data engineer needs to migrate terabytes from Amazon S3 into GCS, mount a bucket for ML training with gcsfuse, and enforce a 100-day retention policy — this Skill provides the exact commands, prerequisites, and critical warnings for each step. ## Quick Start Ask the assistant to create a new Cloud Storage bucket in a specific region and upload a local file to it.
