Orkestra

A runtime for Kubernetes operators.

Declare. Run.

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You have a CRD. Kubernetes stores it, validates it, and serves it.

The only missing piece is something that watches it and acts on it.

Traditionally that means Go: informers, workqueues, reconcile loops, code generation, Dockerfiles, Helm charts — a software project per operator. Most engineers never start. Teams that do spend weeks before the first CR reconciles.

Orkestra removes that entirely.

Declare

apiVersion: orkestra.orkspace.io/v1
kind: Katalog
metadata:
  name: website-operator
spec:
  crds:
    website:
      crdFile: ./crd.yaml
      crFiles: [./cr.yaml]
      operatorBox:
        onCreate:
          deployments:
            - name: "{{ .metadata.name }}"
              image: "{{ .spec.image }}"
              replicas: "{{ .spec.replicas }}"
              reconcile: true
          services:
            - name: "{{ .metadata.name }}-svc"
              port: 80
              targetPort: "{{ .spec.port }}"
              reconcile: true

That is the whole operator.

Run

ork run

Orkestra reads the Katalog, applies the CRD and CR, starts the operator, creates the Deployment and Service, sets owner references on both, writes status, emits Kubernetes events, corrects drift, and exposes health, metrics, and a control center.

Not a single line of Go.

Your CRD is enough. The rest is just a Katalog.

What every CRD gets

Every CRD declared in a Katalog becomes a complete, isolated operator. Nothing to configure.

Getting started

Install

# Install (macOS)
brew install orkspace/tap/ork orkspace/tap/orkcc

# Install (Linux)
curl -sSL https://get.orkestra.sh | bash

Windows Download ork_windows_amd64.zip and orkcc_windows_amd64.zip from the latest release.
Extract the archives and add the folder containing ork.exe and orkcc.exe to your PATH.

Initialize and run

ork init
ork run

No cluster? Add --dev to create a temporary kind cluster. Requires Docker.

ork init scaffolds a katalog.yaml, crd.yaml, and cr.yaml in the current directory — like terraform init.

→ Learning to Orkestrate — the guided path from first operator to full platform. Every capability has a runnable example.

Control Center

In another terminal:

ork control

→ localhost:8081 · username:password → orkestra

Six Runtimes. 75 CRDs. One Control Center.

Live deployment: cc.orkestra.sh

Numbers

79 MB is a live measurement from a 10-CRD runtime (process_resident_memory_bytes from the /metrics endpoint — raw scrape). The memory reduction works because Orkestra pays the cost of client-go, leader election, and health servers once per runtime. Per-CRD cost is a goroutine pool and an in-memory cache. Isolation works the same way kube-controller-manager isolates Deployment, StatefulSet, and Job controllers — dedicated informer, queue, and worker pool per CRD. A panic in one is caught by safeReconcile; the others keep running. The Control Center aggregates all runtimes into a single dashboard.

What Orkestra is not

Orkestra is not an operator — it is a runtime for Kubernetes behaviour. Each CRD you declare in a Katalog becomes an operator. Orkestra itself is the runtime that runs them.

CRD generation is a starting point, not the source of truth. ork generate crd scaffolds a base CRD from your Katalog. You own the final schema — add validation, printer columns, and version history to it. crdFile just points to whatever CRD file you maintain.

It does not replace Go for complex logic. Hooks and constructors exist for exactly this reason. ~90% of operators are declarative structure; ~10% need code. Orkestra handles the 90% and gives the 10% a clean interface.

External infrastructure providers are in development. For AWS, MongoDB, or cloud DNS alongside Kubernetes resources, use Crossplane for external infrastructure and Orkestra for the application layer. The two complement each other.

It does not auto-sync from Git. Configuration is resolved at startup and locked in. Katalogs define long-lived API contracts; silently reloading them is dangerous. Use a deployment pipeline like any other runtime change.

Documentation

Community

Issues · Discussions · Contributing

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE