What is gke-golden-path?

A set of recommended defaults and readiness checks for production Google Kubernetes Engine clusters. It focuses on Autopilot, a mode where Google manages much of the underlying compute infrastructure, while also highlighting decisions made when a cluster is created.

Use it to plan clusters, choose between Autopilot and other modes, check production readiness, review default settings, and document reasons for configuration changes.

It gives developers a baseline for designing or reviewing a cluster without choosing every setting from scratch. It also draws attention to networking and address-allocation choices that can be difficult to change later.

gke-golden-path — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by gke-labs

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add gke-labs/kube-agents --skill gke-golden-path

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/gke-labs/kube-agents

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gke-labs/kube-agents/gke-golden-path/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/gke-labs/kube-agents/gke-golden-path)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gke-labs/kube-agents/gke-golden-path"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gke-labs/kube-agents/gke-golden-path/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gke-labs/kube-agents/gke-golden-path"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gke-labs/kube-agents/gke-golden-path.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 64 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,260 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00064	$0.01260
Opus 5	$0.00032	$0.00630
Sonnet 5	$0.00013	$0.00252
Haiku 4.5	$0.00006	$0.00126

Measured 12d ago against content hash cde697d89555, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

gke-golden-path scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to gke-golden-path — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

agents/platform/skills/gke-golden-path/SKILL.md · 109 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GKE Golden Path Configuration

The golden path is the recommended Autopilot configuration for production clusters. It defines sensible defaults — when the user requests different settings, apply them and note relevant trade-offs.

MCP Tools: get_cluster, create_cluster, update_cluster

Rules

Default to the golden path. Use golden path values unless the user requests otherwise. When deviating, note trade-offs but respect the user's choice.
Day-0 vs Day-1. Flag Day-0 decisions (networking, private nodes, subnets, IP allocation) prominently — they are hard/impossible to change after creation.
Tool preference: MCP > gcloud > kubectl. MCP is preferred as it directly interfaces with GKE APIs with structured data, reducing shell syntax errors and parsing ambiguities. See the gke-basics skill's CLI reference for full coverage matrix and override options. If the user says "use gcloud" or "use kubectl", respect that for the session.
Document decisions and rationale, especially for Day-0 choices and golden path deviations.

Required Inputs

If the user is unsure, use golden path defaults.

Project ID (required)
Region (required, e.g., us-central1)
Cluster name (required)
Environment type: dev/test or production (defaults to production)
Networking: bring-your-own VPC/subnet or auto-create (default: auto-create)
Scale expectations: expected node/pod count, workload types
Cost constraints: Spot VM tolerance, budget considerations

Always-Apply Defaults

Recommended best practices applied by default. If the user requests a different setting, apply it and briefly note the security or operational trade-off.

Setting	Golden Path Value
`autopilot.enabled`	`true`
`privateClusterConfig.enablePrivateNodes`	`true`
`masterAuthorizedNetworksConfig.privateEndpointEnforcementEnabled`	`true`
`secretManagerConfig.enabled` + `rotationInterval: 120s`	`true`
`rbacBindingConfig.enableInsecureBinding*`	`false` (both)
`workloadIdentityConfig.workloadPool`	enabled
`networkConfig.datapathProvider`	`ADVANCED_DATAPATH`
`networkConfig.dnsConfig.clusterDns`	`CLOUD_DNS`
`autoscaling.autoscalingProfile`	`OPTIMIZE_UTILIZATION`
`verticalPodAutoscaling.enabled`	`true`
`monitoringConfig` components	SYSTEM_COMPONENTS, STORAGE, POD, DEPLOYMENT, STATEFULSET, DAEMONSET, HPA, JOBSET, CADVISOR, KUBELET, DCGM, APISERVER, SCHEDULER, CONTROLLER_MANAGER
`loggingConfig` components	SYSTEM_COMPONENTS, WORKLOADS (enabled by default)
`advancedDatapathObservabilityConfig.enableMetrics`	`true`
`nodeConfig.shieldedInstanceConfig.enableSecureBoot`	`true`
`nodeConfig.workloadMetadataConfig.mode`	`GKE_METADATA`
`nodeConfig.gcfsConfig.enabled` / `gvnic.enabled`	`true` / `true`
`addonsConfig.statefulHaConfig.enabled`	`true`
Storage CSI drivers (Filestore, GCS FUSE, Parallelstore)	enabled
Pod Security Standards	`restricted` on production namespaces

Read the full file on GitHub · 109 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

assets/golden-path-autopilot.yaml 3.6 KB

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

12d ago First seen · 109 lines · 64 tokens per session scan A cde697d89555

Subscribe to this mod's changes

gke-golden-path is a skill published in the GitHub repository gke-labs/kube-agents (54 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 64 tokens to every session and 1,260 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to gke-golden-path, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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