See OpenKubes in Action
Try OpenKubes on your workstation
Discover the local development environment, then follow the Quick Start to explore OpenKubes yourself. Watch the video on YouTube or find all three video tutorials in the ok-local README.
Quickstart & Video Tutorials →Explore the OpenKubes Universe
Two illustrated journeys make the ideas behind OpenKubes tangible — from the foundations of platform engineering to AI-assisted, verifiable operations.
A contract-first platform engineering framework
OpenKubes formalizes how Kubernetes capabilities get built, provisioned, and verified — without locking teams into a single vendor, cloud, or component. Every capability follows the same chain from idea to running cluster:
"A cluster is not considered fully provisioned until the contract test passes." — ADR-018
"No structure without a forcing consumer." A contract is only formalized once a second real consumer needs it.
Decisions are recorded as Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and never skipped — there is no implementation without a committed ADR. The project's knowledge graph (okgraph.py) maps every ADR, commit, and issue into a single traversable structure, so the reasoning behind the platform is never lost.
Three-way review, human merge
Every ADR passes through a structured review before it can be merged:
Author
Anyone — maintainer or external contributor — can author an ADR or propose a change on a branch. No direct write access to main.
Claude & GPT review
Claude checks internal consistency and missing counter-arguments. GPT checks governance language and cross-ADR consistency. AI may argue — it does not merge.
Human merge
The maintainer holds project context and makes the final call. "AI may argue; only humans merge."
Branch protection is enforced on the mother repo: pull requests required, no force-push, linear history. The three-way review is a process discipline, not a technical gate.
From the field
Essays and stories on how OpenKubes is built — the method, the contracts, and what happened when we let AI agents work inside them.
Developer Workspaces: Bounded Authority for Coding Agents
How OpenKubes states a coding agent's source, credentials, network, storage and lifecycle as one Proposed contract, and what the reference implementation has measured on disposable clusters. A reference implementation, not production-ready.
AI Thinks. OpenKubes Executes. Evidence Proves.
Introducing a proposed reference architecture for trustworthy agent-assisted Kubernetes operations: agents propose, humans approve, platform contracts govern execution, and independent evidence verifies outcomes. Architecture-only, with no implementation commitment.
The Secret Contract, Made Real
Where do secrets live, and how does a workload three clusters away get exactly the one it needs — and nothing more? How OpenKubes turns the Secret Contract into a datacenter profile: a central Vault consumed through the Vault Secrets Operator, onboarded declaratively with Crossplane.
The Contract Is the Guardrail
An AI agent fixed a crashing deployment, found two bugs in its own test, and declined a change that crossed an ownership boundary — none of it requiring trust in the model. How deterministic sensors and a human-controlled gate make AI-assisted platform work safe and productive.
The Immortal Platform
Building self-healing digital infrastructure with OpenKubes — what happens when the infrastructure that runs Kubernetes itself fails.
Kubernetes Anywhere. Make it.
How we built OpenKubes with Crossplane and Cluster API — from the second cluster problem to a contract-first framework.
Repositories
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publicopenkubes/openkubesMother repo — architecture, ADRs, platform-engineering-method.md, knowledge graph.
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publicopenkubes/ok-clusterCluster lifecycle capability — provisioning, bootstrap, teardown, kubeconfig contracts. Live cluster access is VPN-only.
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publicopenkubes/ok-storageStorage capability contracts and provider implementations.
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publicopenkubes/ok-observabilityPer-cluster Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenSearch stack (ADR-018).
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publicLocal OpenKubes development and evaluation environment — start here to try OpenKubes on your workstation.
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publicopenkubes/ok-linuxBase OS layer for constrained and edge deployment profiles.
All repos are public — code, contracts, and ADRs are open. Real provider values and cluster credentials never live in the repos; reaching a live cluster itself requires VPN access.
How to contribute
- Read the method first. Start with
docs/platform-engineering-method.mdin openkubes/openkubes and browse the ADR series to understand what's already decided. - Find a forcing consumer. OpenKubes doesn't build structure speculatively — proposals land better when tied to a real second use case, not a hypothetical one.
- Open a branch, not a direct commit.
mainis protected. Author your ADR or change on a branch and open a pull request. - Go through three-way review. Expect feedback from both AI reviewers before a maintainer makes the merge decision.
- Small, scoped changes. ADRs are precise and narrow — future ideas become new tickets rather than expanding an in-flight one.
Good places to start
Constrained edge profile
Five open spikes: OS candidate, GitOps agent, image strategy, storage, autonomy-under-partition.
ok CLI
Wrapper-vs-logic-carrier design spike — standalone binary vs. kubectl plugin (Krew).
Requirements inventory
Research spike on whether a first-class Requirement layer belongs in the architecture.
Cluster deregistration
make unregister-cluster — clean up orphaned secrets and ProviderConfigs after teardown.
Built together. Open to more.
OpenKubes is jointly developed and supported by Clouds Sky GmbH and Kubernauts GmbH. Their commitment helps move the open-source framework forward while keeping the architecture and contributions open to the wider community.
Clouds Sky GmbH ↗
Cloud and platform engineering, Kubernetes infrastructure, and enterprise experience.
Kubernauts GmbH ↗
Kubernetes expertise, knowledge sharing, training, and cloud-native community engagement.
Become a sponsor or strategic partner
We welcome additional sponsors and strategic partners who believe in open, sovereign, Kubernetes-native platform engineering. Support may include engineering contributions, infrastructure, community programs, or project funding.
For Investors
Help shape the future of sovereign cloud infrastructure. OpenKubes welcomes conversations with investors interested in open-source infrastructure, Kubernetes-native platforms, enterprise AI and digital sovereignty. We are exploring strategic investment opportunities to accelerate platform development, ecosystem growth and commercial adoption.
Investment discussions are exploratory. Any potential investment structure, terms, and participating legal entity would be agreed separately.
Community & Open Hours
Join the OpenKubes community for hands-on demos, technical discussions, live Q&A and collaborative platform engineering. Whether you're exploring OpenKubes or already contributing, you're welcome to join. Check Kubernauts Worldwide Meetup for upcoming sessions.