FAQ

What is ARKONIS?

ARKONIS (Agentic Reconciler for Kubernetes, Operator-Native Inference System) is a Kubernetes operator that lets you deploy, scale, and manage AI agents as first-class Kubernetes resources. Instead of managing containers, you manage agents — each defined by a model, a system prompt, and a set of tools.

Do I need a Kubernetes cluster to try it?

No. The ark CLI lets you run ArkFlow pipelines locally on your laptop with no cluster, no Redis, and no operator required. The same YAML files work unchanged when you deploy to Kubernetes.

go install github.com/arkonis-dev/ark-operator/cmd/ark@latest
ark run quickstart.yaml --provider mock --watch

Which LLM providers are supported?

Anthropic (claude-* models) and OpenAI (gpt-*, o1-*, o3-* models) are supported. Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint also works — set OPENAI_BASE_URL to point at Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, or any other local server, and use the model name as-is (e.g. qwen2.5:1.5b, llama3.2). The provider is auto-detected from the model name; unknown models default to the OpenAI provider. Google Gemini is planned for v0.8.

How is this different from LangChain / LlamaIndex / CrewAI?

Those are Python frameworks for building agent logic inside your application code. ARKONIS is infrastructure — it runs outside your code and manages agents the same way Kubernetes manages containers. You don’t import it; you kubectl apply it.

How is this different from just running agents in a Deployment?

A plain Deployment knows nothing about agents. It can’t detect when an agent is producing bad output, enforce token budgets, chain agents into DAG pipelines, or route tasks by load. ARKONIS introduces purpose-built primitives (ArkAgent, ArkFlow, ArkService) that encode those concepts at the infrastructure level.

Does it work with any Kubernetes distribution?

Yes. It uses standard controller-runtime and has no cloud-provider dependencies. It works on EKS, GKE, AKS, kind, k3s, and any other conformant distribution.

What task queue does it use?

Redis Streams with consumer groups. Redis is the only external dependency. A future release will add a Kubernetes-native queue option for teams that prefer not to run Redis.

Is there a Helm chart?

Yes. Add the Helm repo and install with one command:

helm repo add arkonis https://charts.arkonis.dev
helm install ark-operator arkonis/ark-operator \
  --namespace ark-system --create-namespace \
  --set taskQueueURL=redis.ark-system.svc.cluster.local:6379 \
  --set apiKeys.anthropicApiKey=sk-ant-...

See the Getting Started guide for the full install options.

Is it production-ready?

The core operator (v0.1–v0.4) is stable and battle-tested. Observability (Prometheus metrics, OpenTelemetry tracing) is planned for v0.7 and is the main gap before we recommend it for production at scale. See the roadmap for the full picture.

How do I contribute?

Open an issue or pull request on GitHub. The project is Apache 2.0 licensed.

Apache 2.0 · ARKONIS