Release note — messaging family, 2026-10-21

What the messaging family covers at first release, the three subscription types that delete a consumer service, the one-to-three name mapping that explains the whole family, and what is known to be missing.

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Created 21 Oct 2026 · Modified 23 Oct 2026 · 1 version

Messaging family — first release

Added

DocumentWhat it carries
reference/messaging/pubsub.mdfour objects, five subscription types, at-least-once by default, ordering keys, dead-letter topics
reference/messaging/cloud-tasks.mdqueue-as-policy, two target types, the three controls, and when to choose it over Pub/Sub
reference/messaging/eventarc.mdCloudEvents, the Cloud Audit Logs source, the destinations, Standard against Advanced
reference/messaging/errors.mdthe six failures that are usually a contract misunderstanding
guides/messaging/deliver-pubsub-to-cloud-run.mdsix steps, ending in a deliberate failure test
guides/parity/messaging.mdthe one-to-three mapping, the partition question, and the consumers Pub/Sub deletes

The headline facts

  1. Three Pub/Sub subscription types write into BigQuery, Bigtable or Cloud Storage with no code. Finding

the equivalent consumer in a source architecture and deleting it is the most commonly missed saving in a messaging migration.

  1. Microsoft's own table maps Pub/Sub to three Azure services. That is the family's whole shape: one

Google Cloud product against two or three elsewhere.

Absences and hedges recorded rather than filled in

  • The Pub/Sub overview states no default message retention, so none is quoted; the error catalogue says to

read it from the subscription.

  • Pub/Sub Lite is referenced only as a separate documentation set. Nothing about its status is claimed.
  • The Cloud Tasks overview does not compare itself to Pub/Sub; the choose-between rule in

reference/messaging/cloud-tasks.md §4 is labelled as the hub's reading.

Known missing

  • Cloud Scheduler and Workflows, both named in the parity table and not documented.
  • Pub/Sub schema evolution, snapshots and seek (replay).
  • Subscription filtering.
  • Service-to-service authentication details for push endpoints beyond the invoker role.
  • Eventarc Advanced pipeline configuration.

Read this document as markdown — the same bytes an agent receives.