How-to guides
How-to guides provide direct recipes for specific tasks. They assume you already know the basic Kix workflow from the Tutorials. Pick the section that matches the job you want to finish.
Start and inspect a Kix project
Section titled “Start and inspect a Kix project”Set up a repository, choose a target environment profile, and inspect what a cluster builds.
- Install and run Kix
- Use
mkFlakein a consuming repo - Select and configure a cluster flavor
- List clusters and packages
- Render manifests
- Deploy to kind
- Upgrade a project to a new version of Kix
Operate a cluster
Section titled “Operate a cluster”Preview changes, apply activations, check health and drift, roll back, and export YAML.
- Preview changes with
kix planandkix diff - Deploy with dry-run, timeouts, pruning, and log or TUI output modes
- Check resource status and check cluster health
- Check live resources for drift and reconcile drift
- Roll back an activation and garbage-collect stale resources
- Bind a cluster definition to its Kubernetes cluster
- Export plain YAML and export audit-preserving YAML
Promote images
Section titled “Promote images”Manage committed container image digests and promote builds in CI with kix pin.
- Create a committed image pin file
- Promote and verify an image pin
- Pin an instance image without code
- Build, promote, and deploy an image in CI
Debug dependency wiring
Section titled “Debug dependency wiring”Connect instances across namespaces, use aliases and auto-instantiation, and inspect the dependency graph.
- Wire cross-namespace dependencies explicitly
- Use aliases and default aliases
- Use auto-instantiation with
availablePackages,optional, andautoNamespace - Debug a missing dependency
- Visualize the dependency graph with
kix graph - Inspect an instance’s
deps,parts, andout
Author packages and clusters
Section titled “Author packages and clusters”Build reusable packages, declare typed options, mount volumes, and compose multi-environment or multi-team clusters.
- Create a local package
- Add typed package options
- Add env vars and mounts
- Reuse one package for multiple instances
- Map the availability level in a package
- Add a post-deploy health check
- Stamp multi-environment clusters with
mkEnv - Compose multi-team clusters with
mergeFragments
Adopt existing resources
Section titled “Adopt existing resources”Reference external services, wrap Helm charts, take ownership of existing workloads, and resolve field-manager conflicts.
- Import an existing service with
kix.mkImport - Connect external databases, caches, mail, and single sign-on
- Use Helm charts through the Kix Helm bridge
- Take ownership of Helm-managed resources and kubectl-managed resources
- Handle server-side-apply conflicts safely and cede fields to a controller
- Preserve existing selectors and patch package output with overlays
Platform capabilities
Section titled “Platform capabilities”Configure cluster-wide ingress, Gateway API routes, TLS certificates, default-deny network policies, storage, secrets, and monitoring.
- Expose a service with Ingress or Gateway API
- Add TLS through a cluster issuer
- Enable generated network policy
- Configure storage classes and PVCs
- Use Kix-managed secrets, SOPS-backed secrets, or externally managed secrets
- Auto-monitor a service
- Set the cluster availability level
Policy, CI, and compliance
Section titled “Policy, CI, and compliance”Enforce scorecard rules at evaluation time and generate SARIF reports, CycloneDX SBOMs, SLSA provenance, and audit bundles.
- Add scorecard rules and override scorecard severity
- Fail the build on scorecard findings
- Run
kix check --sarifin CI - Generate a CycloneDX SBOM and SLSA provenance
- Attest a deployment from its cluster receipt
- Generate an audit bundle
Package task guides
Section titled “Package task guides”Deploy and configure key infrastructure packages from the kixpkgs catalog.