≈700 tokens on demand. Your agent reads this file only when SKILL.md points to it.
GCP Infrastructure Specialist Reference
Purpose: Use this file when GCP-specific networking, runtime, database, messaging, IAM, or cost decisions materially affect the design.
Contents:
- Networking decisions
- Compute and orchestration choices
- Database choices
- Messaging and workflow choices
- IAM and organization controls
- GCP-specific cost optimization
Networking Decisions
| Decision |
Preferred choice |
| Centralized network shared across projects |
Shared VPC |
| Full team-level isolation |
Separate VPCs + peering |
| Regulated data perimeter |
VPC Service Controls |
| Private access to Google APIs |
Private Google Access |
| Private access to managed services |
Private Service Connect |
Compute And Orchestration Choices
| Use case |
Recommended |
Alternative |
Avoid |
| Stateless web API |
Cloud Run |
GKE Autopilot if Kubernetes is required |
Compute Engine |
| Batch processing |
Cloud Run Jobs |
Dataflow for streaming/data workloads |
Compute Engine |
| Standard Kubernetes needs |
GKE Autopilot |
GKE Standard for advanced customization |
unmanaged clusters |
Standard vs Autopilot:
| Criteria |
Standard |
Autopilot |
| Node management |
Manual |
Automatic |
| Billing |
Per node |
Per pod |
| Customization |
High |
Limited |
| Default recommendation |
only when required |
most use cases |
Database Choices
| Requirement |
Recommended |
| Standard web app OLTP |
Cloud SQL |
| High-performance PostgreSQL / HTAP |
AlloyDB |
| Global distribution and very high consistency |
Spanner |
Reference cost/availability anchors:
- Cloud SQL: about
$50+
- AlloyDB: about
$500+
- Spanner: about
$2,000+
Messaging And Workflow Choices
| Need |
Recommended |
| Event fan-out and notifications |
Pub/Sub |
| Rate-limited or scheduled task execution |
Cloud Tasks |
| Multi-step orchestration |
Workflows |
IAM And Organization Controls
- Use Organization Policies for region restrictions and storage guardrails.
- Prefer Workload Identity Federation for GitHub Actions over service-account keys.
- Treat public IPs on Cloud SQL as a risk unless explicitly justified.
- Cloud Run error-rate alert example threshold is
>5% over 300s.
GCP-Specific Cost Optimization
- Cloud SQL
REGIONAL is the production default; use smaller or single-zone options outside prod when safe.
- Cloud Run
min_instances = 0 is a strong default for non-prod.
- GKE Standard can use Spot VMs; Autopilot is simpler but still needs cost review.
- Cloud NAT should be removed or shared in non-prod when possible.
- CUD discounts roughly range from
25-55% depending on type and term.
