GKE Basics

---
name: gke-basics
description: "Plan, create, and configure production-ready Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters using the golden path Autopilot configuration. Covers Day-0 checklist, Autopilot vs Standard, networking (private clusters, VPC-native, Gateway API), security (Workload Identity, Secret Manager, RBAC hardening), observability, scaling, cost optimization, and AI/ML inference. WHEN: create GKE cluster, provision GKE environment, design GKE networking, secure GKE, optimize GKE cost, GKE autoscaling, GKE inference, GKE upgrade, GKE observability, GKE multi-tenancy, GKE batch, GKE HPC, GKE compute class."
---

# Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Basics

GKE is a managed Kubernetes platform on Google Cloud for deploying, scaling, and operating containerized applications. This skill defaults to the **golden path Autopilot configuration** — see [gke-golden-path.md](./references/gke-golden-path.md) for defaults, rules, and guardrails.

## Quick Start

```bash
gcloud services enable container.googleapis.com --quiet
gcloud container clusters create-auto my-cluster --region=us-central1 --quiet
gcloud container clusters get-credentials my-cluster --region=us-central1 --quiet
kubectl create deployment hello-server \
  --image=us-docker.pkg.dev/google-samples/containers/gke/hello-app:1.0
```

## Reference Directory

Load the relevant reference based on trigger keywords. Prefer the most specific match; if ambiguous, ask the user to clarify.

| Scenario | Trigger Keywords | Reference |
|----------|-----------------|-----------|