All posts
release announcement

Introducing Orkestra: Declarative Kubernetes Operators Without the Go

Write a YAML file, get a production-grade Kubernetes operator. No controller code, no informers, no boilerplate.

Orkestra Team 1 min read

Kubernetes operators are powerful — but writing one from scratch means dealing with controllers, informers, workqueues, RBAC, CRD schemas, and hundreds of lines of Go before you’ve even started on your business logic.

Orkestra flips this model. You write a single YAML file — a Katalog — and Orkestra generates and runs the full operator: CRD registration, controller setup, reconciliation loop, status propagation, drift correction, and live observability dashboard.

The core idea

apiVersion: orkestra.orkspace.io/v1
kind: Katalog
metadata:
  name: website-operator
spec:
  crds:
    website:
      apiTypes:
        group: demo.orkestra.io
        version: v1alpha1
        kind: Website
      operatorBox:
        default: true
        onCreate:
          deployments:
            - image: "{{ .spec.image }}"

That’s a complete operator. Apply it, and Orkestra registers the Website CRD, starts the reconciler, and launches the Control Center dashboard — all in under a minute.

What’s included

  • Zero-code operators — declare CRD schema, managed resources, and lifecycle in YAML
  • Dependency ordering — dependsOn between CRDs, startup sequencing guaranteed
  • Drift correction — reconcile: true on any resource keeps it in sync
  • Status propagation — template expressions written automatically to .status
  • Control Center — live dashboard on port 8081, built into the runtime

Try it

ork run --file ./katalog.yaml

See the Getting Started guide to build your first operator in under 10 minutes.