Know what exists, ask AI about it, let humans sign in without a directory entry.
Three mechanisms this course revisits constantly from here forward.
Cloud Asset Inventory
Queryable, historical record of every resource & IAM policy org-wide
Gemini Cloud Assist
Reads that same data to answer natural-language questions about your real environment
Workforce Identity Federation
Humans sign in via their own IdP — zero Cloud Identity account created
If the scenario describes a person signing in with no directory entry, it's Workforce Identity Federation — its workload counterpart shows up later in the IAM chapter.