Google OS Config API

Name: OS Config API
Brand: OS Config API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecCloud InfrastructureComputeoauth217 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Manage VM patch deployments, OS policy assignments, and inventory across Google Cloud Compute Engine fleets.

Use for: Schedule a monthly patch deployment for production Linux VMs, Pause an in-flight OS policy rollout, List inventory of packages on a specific VM, Resume a previously paused patch deployment

Not supported: Does not provision VMs, run ad-hoc shell commands, or scan container images - use for declarative VM patching, OS policy assignment, and inventory only.

The OS Config API manages patch deployments, OS policy assignments, and inventory across Compute Engine VM fleets. It schedules patch jobs (with maintenance windows, reboot behaviour, and rollout strategies), declares desired OS state via OS Policies, and surfaces inventory and patch compliance per instance. Use it to keep Linux and Windows VM fleets compliant with security baselines and to drive scheduled patch rollouts. The spec exposes 17 endpoints.

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the OS Config API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the OS Config API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fgoogleapis.com%2Fosconfig" | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fgoogleapis.com%2Fosconfig" | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with OS Config API.

Schedule patch deployments with maintenance windows and reboot policies

Declare desired OS state via OS policy assignments and roll them out across zones

Pause and resume patch deployments and OS policy assignments mid-rollout

Read inventory of installed packages and detected vulnerabilities per VM

List revisions of an OS policy assignment to support rollback decisions

GET STARTED

Start building with OS Config API

Explore with Jentic One

View OpenAPI Document

Use Cases

Patterns agents use OS Config API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Scheduled patch rollouts with maintenance windows

Schedule patch deployments that target a labelled fleet of VMs, restrict execution to defined maintenance windows, and choose whether to reboot. The OS Config API lets platform teams roll patches out in waves - for example dev first, then prod - and pause if early indicators look bad. This replaces ad-hoc SSH-and-apt scripts with a managed rollout plane.

Create a patch deployment named monthly-linux-prod that targets instances with label tier=prod and runs the third Sunday of the month between 02:00 and 04:00 UTC.

Desired-state OS policy management

Declare OS policies that assert package presence, file content, and shell-script execution on Linux and Windows VMs, then bind them to zones and instance filters via os policy assignments. The API tracks revisions so you can roll back to the prior policy if a change breaks workloads. Useful for fleets that need configuration drift detection without a separate config-management tool.

Create an OS policy assignment that ensures the package fail2ban is present on all Linux VMs in zone europe-west1-b, then list revisions to confirm the rollout.

Inventory and compliance reporting

Pull VM inventory - installed packages, configured services, and detected vulnerabilities - to feed compliance dashboards or security review tooling. The OS Config API surfaces inventories per instance plus aggregate patch compliance views, so an automation can produce a compliance score across thousands of VMs without remote command execution.

List inventory for every VM in zone us-central1-a, write the package list per instance to a Cloud Storage bucket, and flag any instance reporting a CRITICAL vulnerability.

Agent-driven patch operations via Jentic

An ops agent reacting to a CVE can use Jentic to schedule a patch deployment that closes the gap and watch the rollout via the operations endpoint. Credentials stay in your Jentic One instance, so the agent runs under a scoped service-account token with audit trail. Useful for incident-response bots that need to mass-patch a fleet quickly.

Use Jentic to find the create-patch-deployment operation, load its schema, and schedule a one-off patch for tier=prod Linux VMs targeting CVE-2026-0001 within the next 4 hours.

Key Endpoints

17 endpoints — the os config api manages patch deployments, os policy assignments, and inventory across compute engine vm fleets.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

POST

/v1/{+parent}/patchDeployments

Create a patch deployment

POST

/v1/{+name}:pause

Pause a patch deployment

POST

/v1/{+name}:resume

Resume a paused patch deployment

POST

/v1/{+parent}/osPolicyAssignments

Create an OS policy assignment

GET

/v1/{+name}:listRevisions

List OS policy assignment revisions

GET

/v1/{+parent}/inventories

List VM inventory

GET

/v1/{+parent}/instanceDetails

List per-instance compliance details

POST

/v1/{+parent}/patchDeployments

Create a patch deployment

POST

/v1/{+name}:pause

Pause a patch deployment

POST

/v1/{+name}:resume

Resume a paused patch deployment

POST

/v1/{+parent}/osPolicyAssignments

Create an OS policy assignment

GET

/v1/{+name}:listRevisions

List OS policy assignment revisions

GET

/v1/{+parent}/inventories

List VM inventory

GET

/v1/{+parent}/instanceDetails

List per-instance compliance details

Why Jentic?

What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.

Setup

Wiring the OS Config API by hand means setting up Google OAuth 2.0 from a service account, minting scoped tokens, and managing patch-deployment and policy-assignment resource paths against osconfig.googleapis.com yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the OS Config API from the API Directory, store the OAuth credential once, and your agent calls it.

Permission scoping

The OS Config API puts the resource in the URL path (/v1/{+parent}/patchDeployments, /v1/{+name}:pause), so a rule can pin your agent to one parent project: it can create patch deployments and read inventory there and nothing else. You choose the operations it may call, so you can allow pause and resume while leaving OS policy assignment out of the allowed set.

Credential isolation

Your Google OAuth credential for the OS Config API is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'schedule a patch deployment' or 'apply an OS policy', and Jentic returns the matching OS Config operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.

FAQs

Specific to using OS Config API through Jentic.

What authentication does the OS Config API use?

The API uses Google OAuth 2.0 with the cloud-platform scope. Through Jentic, tokens are minted from a service account stored in your Jentic One instance so agents never see raw credentials.

Can I target VMs by label with patch deployments?

Yes. The patch deployment instanceFilter accepts label selectors and zone filters, so you can scope a deployment to tier=prod or env=staging across selected zones.

What are the rate limits for the OS Config API?

Google Cloud applies per-project quotas on patch and OS policy mutations. Treat large rollouts as long-running - patch jobs and OS policy assignments return operations that need polling rather than retry on failure.

How do I pause a patch deployment through Jentic?

Search Jentic for pause patch deployment, load the schema for POST /v1/{+name}:pause, and execute it with the deployment resource name. Resume later with the matching :resume call.

Does this API run arbitrary commands on a VM?

Only via OS policy resources of type ExecResource and only as part of a declared policy. Ad-hoc command execution belongs in different products (SSH, IAP) - this API is for declarative state and patch orchestration.

How do I check patch compliance for a project?

Call GET /v1/{+parent}/instanceDetails for an OS policy assignment to see per-instance compliance, or pull patchJob status for the latest patch deployment run to see fleet-level results.

Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the OS Config API?

Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which OS Config operations and credentials the agent may use. Since the API carries the resource in the URL path (for example /v1/{+parent}/patchDeployments and /v1/{+name}:pause), you can pin the agent to a single parent project so it creates patch deployments and reads inventory there and nowhere else. You also pick the exact operations it can call, so you can allow pause and resume while leaving OS policy assignment creation out of the allowed set.

Google OS Config API

Connect the OS Config API to your agent

Capabilities

Start building with OS Config API

Use Cases

Key Endpoints

Why Jentic?

Related APIs

FAQs