k8s-config-connector

k8s-config-connector is Google's official Kubernetes controller for managing GCP resources, Cloud SQL, GCS buckets, Spanner, IAM, as Kubernetes manifests. Write YAML, kubectl apply, and a controller in your cluster keeps the GCP-side resources synced. Apache 2.0 and free.

This is the GCP-native answer to 'I'd rather declare infrastructure than click through a console or maintain a separate Terraform repo.' Install the controller, give it a service account, and your CI pipeline can manage cloud resources the same way it manages workloads. It uses the standard CRD pattern, so kubectl, kustomize, and GitOps tools work out of the box.

For teams already running everything through Kubernetes manifests on GCP, this collapses two infrastructure systems into one. Solo developers running a small GCP project: trivial to add. Larger teams get unified RBAC, GitOps workflows, and a single deployment surface for app and cloud resources. The closest comparison is Crossplane, but Config Connector is single-cloud and Google-maintained.

The catch: it only manages GCP, so any multi-cloud story still needs Terraform or Crossplane on the side. The controller is one more critical thing to run in your cluster, and resource drift between the cluster's view and the GCP console is a real category of bug you'll occasionally chase. A complex Terraform setup that works is not automatically worth replacing.