How to use the IAM Policy Management Helper agent skill

What an agent skill is and what this one does

An agent skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md instruction file and optional reference files. When the skill is installed, the agent loads these instructions when your request matches the skill's description, so it follows a defined workflow instead of improvising.

This skill covers two policy types. IAM v1 allow policies grant roles to principals such as users, service accounts and groups. IAM v2 deny policies set guardrails at organization, folder or project level that block designated principals from using certain permissions, regardless of allow policies. Deny policies are evaluated before allow policies.

• Read-only requests (listing or inspecting policies) run autonomously and results are shown to you.
• Changes (adding, removing or setting bindings, or creating, updating and deleting deny policies) are planned first and need your approval.
• After an approved change, the agent runs a verification command and reports whether the live state matches what was expected.
• Public access requests are refused: the skill will not grant allUsers or allAuthenticatedUsers basic roles or broad permissions, and proposes scoped role bindings for named identities instead.

Install the skill with a ZIP download or the Claude apps

Download the ZIP of the skill from this page and unzip it. For a personal setup, place the unzipped folder in ~/.claude/skills/. For a single project, place it in that project's .claude/skills/ folder.

If you use the Claude apps, you can instead upload the skill under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

• Personal install: ~/.claude/skills/
• Project install: .claude/skills/ inside your project
• Apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills

Check the requirements before you start

The skill only works with Google Cloud. You need the Google Cloud CLI (gcloud) installed and authenticated, IAM permissions on the target resource that allow reading or changing policies, and network access to Google Cloud APIs.

• Google Cloud CLI (gcloud) installed and authenticated
• Sufficient IAM permissions on the project, folder, organization or resource you target
• Network access to Google Cloud APIs for gcloud, REST or MCP commands

Trigger the skill with natural requests

The skill loads when your request involves creating, updating, listing or deleting IAM allow or deny policies. You do not need a special command; describe the task in plain language and name the resource.

• List who has access to a project: say you want to see the current IAM policy on a named project.
• Grant a role: ask for a specific role for a specific user, group or service account on a project or folder.
• Create a deny guardrail: ask for a deny policy that blocks a permission for a principal across an organization or folder.
• Check testable permissions: ask which permissions can be tested on a project resource.

Review the plan before any change is applied

For any mutating request, the agent writes out the exact gcloud command with all parameters, such as --member, --role, --attachment-point, --kind=denypolicies and --policy-file. It warns that the change can affect live access and takes time to propagate across Google Cloud. It then waits for your explicit approval.

Read the command carefully: check the project ID, the principal, the role and the attachment point before you approve. After approval, the agent runs the verification step defined in the reference files and reports the result.

• Confirm the project, folder or organization ID is the one you intend.
• Confirm the principal is a specific identity, not allUsers or allAuthenticatedUsers.
• Confirm the role is the narrowest one that does the job.

Know the safety notes and limits

This skill runs scripts and uses the network. Before running gcloud, REST or MCP commands, the agent must follow the usage attribution instructions in references/attribution.md. For gcloud, that means prefixing each command inline with the CLOUDSDK_METRICS_REQUEST_ATTRIBUTION environment variable, and the skill says not to use gcloud config set for this. The tag identifies only the skill and its version and carries no user data.

The skill does not cover access denial troubleshooting (use the separate iam-helper-for-troubleshooting skill), temporary privileged access (use iam-helper-for-privileged-access-management), VPC Service Controls, or network firewall rules. Mistakes in live access policies can lock out users or expose resources, so keep the approval step in place.