CLI tooling setup — aws, az, gcloud, doctl

Why this matters

Clicking around the console is fine for the first hour and a liability after that — every real workflow eventually moves to the CLI or to an IaC tool that wraps the CLI's API surface. Getting all four installed, authenticated, and producing JSON you can pipe into jq is the on-ramp to everything else in this course.

Demo

Install each CLI, authenticate, and make one read-only API call that proves the credential chain works end-to-end.

Try it yourself

1. Install all four CLIs and make every read-only smoke test return success — if any one fails, fix the credential before moving on, do not skip.
2. Run aws configure list and az account show and confirm the printed identity matches the email you signed up with — wrong identity here will cost you hours later.
3. Set a shell alias for each CLI's most common JSON-with-jq pattern (e.g. alias awsr='aws ec2 describe-regions --output json | jq') so you build muscle memory.

Prompt your AI

Use these three in order. Each builds on the one before.

1. Basics & terminology

In one paragraph, explain how cloud CLIs authenticate like I'm new to it, covering API keys, OAuth browser login, and instance metadata.

2. Why it works (the mechanism)

Walk me through how `aws sts get-caller-identity` actually works step by step — from reading ~/.aws/credentials, to signing the request with SigV4, to the IAM evaluation that returns my ARN.

3. Advanced — application & what's next

Given a developer laptop that needs to switch between three AWS accounts, two GCP projects, and an Azure tenant daily, design a credential-management setup using profiles, aws-vault, gcloud configurations, and az contexts.

References

• AWS CLI v2 install guide
• Google Cloud CLI install guide