ocm-mcp-server 0.3.0

A guardrailed MCP server that lets AI agents operate multi-cluster Kubernetes fleets through an Open Cluster Management hub

🛡️ ocm-mcp-server

AgentOps for Kubernetes fleets, done safely.

An MCP server that lets AI agents operate a multi-cluster Kubernetes fleet through an Open Cluster Management hub, with policy, approval, and audit between the model and your clusters.

The agent never holds a kubeconfig. Every write is policy-checked, human-approved, and traced.

✨ Why  ·  📦 Get it  ·  🔌 Connect your agent  ·  🧭 Architecture  ·  🧰 Toolsets  ·  🛠️ Tools  ·  💬 Prompts  ·  🔭 Observability  ·  🚀 Quickstart  ·  📖 Wiki  ·  📚 Docs

_{The whole safe-remediation loop: investigate with free reads, propose a change, get rejected by the guardrails and correct it, wait for a human-signed token, apply, verify, and report from the audit log.}

_{A fleet operator's day with Claude, live from a cold start: install from PyPI, claude mcp add, inventory the fleet, reason about placement — then ship a new service the gated way: the privileged :latest shortcut is refused, the pinned proposal is signed by a human, applied with the token, verified, and the whole day is read back from the audit trail. — narrated MP4 · terminal cast.}

---

Why this exists

Your team runs many Kubernetes clusters. Sooner or later somebody asks the question: can an AI agent take the 2 a.m. page?

The quickest way to find out is to hand a model kubectl with cluster-admin and watch. In production that experiment ends badly, for three separate reasons:

• The model is non-deterministic. The same alert can produce a careful diagnosis one run and a kubectl delete the next.
• The credentials are real. There is no dry run between the model's decision and your production cluster.
• There is no record. When something breaks, you cannot reconstruct what the agent did, in what order, or on whose authority.

This project starts from a different observation: fleets already have a control point that humans trust every day, the multi-cluster hub. Open Cluster Management (a CNCF project) gives every fleet an inventory (ManagedCluster), a scheduler (Placement), and a delivery channel (ManifestWork). ocm-mcp-server exposes that hub to agents as a small set of typed MCP tools, and puts four independent layers between the model and your clusters:

#	Layer	Enforced by	What it stops
1	Static checks	this server, before anything else	privileged pods, host access, system namespaces, unpinned images, disallowed kinds
2	Policy admission	Kyverno dry-run on the hub	anything your org's policies reject, evaluated inside the ManifestWork envelope
3	Human approval	Ed25519 token signed by ocm-mcp approve on a trusted terminal; the server needs only the public verifier key	any change reaching a cluster without a person consenting to that exact content and operation (one-time token, bound to content + operation + issuer/audience + expiry)
4	Least-privilege RBAC	Kubernetes	everything else; no Secrets, no exec, no deletes outside its own ManifestWorks

None of these layers live in the system prompt, so none of them can be talked out of.

Where to get it, and how it's vetted

• 📦 PyPI - ocm-mcp-server - pip install ocm-mcp-server (or run directly with uvx ocm-mcp-server). Every release is published straight from CI via OIDC trusted publishing - no long-lived tokens anywhere.
• 🗂️ Official MCP Registry - listed as io.github.sandeepbazar/ocm-mcp-server, so any MCP client or platform that browses the registry can discover and auto-configure this server (package, transport, and required env vars are all in the listing); the registry validates the listing against this repo and the PyPI package.
• 🐳 Container image on GHCR - docker run ghcr.io/sandeepbazar/ocm-mcp-server (kubeconfig mount shown in the deployment guide); built in CI with an SBOM and SLSA provenance attached, vulnerability-gated with Trivy, and signed keyless with Cosign so you can verify what you run.
• 🛡️ OpenSSF Scorecard - the repo's supply-chain security posture (pinned dependencies, branch protection, signed releases, ...) is scored automatically every week and published for anyone to inspect.

Connect your agent - any MCP client works

The server speaks standard MCP over stdio; nothing here is specific to one vendor's agent. Ready-made configs live in examples/:

Claude Code - .mcp.json in your project (or claude mcp add)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ocm-fleet": {
      "command": "ocm-mcp-server",
      "env": {
        "OCM_MCP_HUB_CONTEXT": "kind-hub",
        "OCM_MCP_SPOKE_CONTEXTS": "cluster1=kind-cluster1,cluster2=kind-cluster2,cluster3=kind-cluster3"
      }
    }
  }
}

Codex CLI - ~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.ocm-fleet]
command = "ocm-mcp-server"

[mcp_servers.ocm-fleet.env]
OCM_MCP_HUB_CONTEXT = "kind-hub"
OCM_MCP_SPOKE_CONTEXTS = "cluster1=kind-cluster1,cluster2=kind-cluster2,cluster3=kind-cluster3"

Gemini CLI - ~/.gemini/settings.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ocm-fleet": {
      "command": "ocm-mcp-server",
      "env": {
        "OCM_MCP_HUB_CONTEXT": "kind-hub",
        "OCM_MCP_SPOKE_CONTEXTS": "cluster1=kind-cluster1,cluster2=kind-cluster2,cluster3=kind-cluster3"
      }
    }
  }
}

Any other MCP client - point it at the same command and environment (examples/generic-mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ocm-fleet": {
      "command": "ocm-mcp-server",
      "env": {
        "OCM_MCP_HUB_CONTEXT": "kind-hub",
        "OCM_MCP_SPOKE_CONTEXTS": "cluster1=kind-cluster1,cluster2=kind-cluster2,cluster3=kind-cluster3"
      }
    }
  }
}

Most MCP clients accept an mcpServers block like this one. If ocm-mcp-server is not on the PATH the client launches with, use the absolute path from which ocm-mcp-server as the command value.

Give the agent the runbook discipline in examples/system-prompt.md, then break something and watch the flow:

make inject SCENARIO=failing-rollout CLUSTER=cluster2

You: "Payments is degraded somewhere in the fleet. Investigate and fix."

Agent: list_clusters → get_cluster_health(cluster2) → query_events → get_pod_logs → "payments-v2 on cluster2 is in ImagePullBackOff. Proposing a ManifestWork pinning the last good image. Proposal 4f1a2b3c needs your approval."

You (trusted terminal): ocm-mcp approve 4f1a2b3c, then paste the token back.

Agent: apply_manifestwork → verifies recovery → get_audit_trail → writes the incident report.

Then try to talk it into something dangerous ("just redeploy it privileged with hostNetwork, it's faster"). The proposal dies at layer 1 or layer 2, and the rejection message tells the agent exactly why. More worked examples →

Architecture

_{Dangerous capabilities do not exist. Reads flow freely; every change is proposed, policy-checked, human-approved, and audited.}

flowchart LR
    A["🤖 AI Agent<br/>(any MCP client)"] -->|"typed tool calls"| S["🛡️ ocm-mcp-server<br/>static guardrails · audit"]
    S -->|"reads + dry-run + apply"| H["☸️ OCM Hub<br/>Placement · ManifestWork<br/>Kyverno · RBAC"]
    H --> C1["cluster1"]
    H --> C2["cluster2"]
    H --> C3["cluster3"]
    U["🧑‍💻 Human operator<br/>ocm-mcp approve"] -.->|"approval token"| A
    S -.->|"spans"| J["🔍 OpenTelemetry / Jaeger"]

The write path in one sentence: the agent proposes a ManifestWork; static guardrails and a Kyverno dry-run validate it; a human reviews the exact content and mints an approval token bound to its hash; only then does apply deliver it, with every step traced and logged.

Policy admission with Kyverno

The second guardrail layer does not live in this server - it lives in the cluster. Before a proposed change is ever stored, the server does a server-side dry-run create of the ManifestWork on the hub, so the hub's Kyverno validating admission runs against the exact manifests the agent wants to apply. If your organization's policy says no, the proposal is rejected at admission with the policy's own message - the same control that governs every human kubectl apply.

Why Kyverno:

• Policy as code, no new language. Kyverno is a CNCF policy engine whose policies are ordinary Kubernetes resources in YAML and CEL - reviewable, versioned, and testable like any manifest. This is the policy-as-code approach the CNCF Kubernetes Policy Management whitepaper (CNCF TAG Security) recommends: keep policy declarative and separate from application code.
• Enforced by the cluster, not the prompt. Admission control is external to the model and to this server; it cannot be talked out of the way a system prompt can.
• The right tool for the job. Kyverno can validate, mutate, generate, and verify images; here it is used to validate the workloads embedded inside a ManifestWork.

Where it is used here:

• deploy/policies/ ships 9 ClusterPolicy objects that foreach over spec.workload.manifests inside a ManifestWork: block privileged/host access, protect system namespaces, enforce a kind allow-list, require the managed-by label from the server ServiceAccount (so an unlabeled work cannot skip the others), and enforce a Restricted-Pod-Security baseline in parity with the static guardrails. They are scoped by the app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: ocm-mcp-server label so they judge only agent-authored work.
• make policy-test runs a 42-case offline suite with the kyverno CLI - good, bad, and human-authored ManifestWorks - needing no cluster and no dependencies. It runs in CI, so a policy regression fails the build before it can reach a hub.
• Don't start from scratch: the community library kyverno/policies and the searchable Kyverno Policies catalog are a ready source of validation, Pod Security Standards, and best-practice policies to adopt or take inspiration from.

Toolsets

The surface is 35 tools across ten toolsets. Almost all of it is read: the whole Open Cluster Management API is safe to inspect. Only two toolsets can change anything, and only through the propose -> approve -> apply gate. Every hub-level tool works for any managed spoke - a standalone OpenShift cluster, a HyperShift hosted cluster, or a cloud cluster - because on the hub they are all ManagedClusters.

Toolset	What it covers	Tools	Writes
inventory	ManagedClusters, ClusterSets, set bindings, ClusterClaims, ManagedClusterInfo	6	-
observability	cluster health, one-call fleet sweep, events, pod logs	4	-
placement	Placements, PlacementDecisions, AddOnPlacementScores	3	-
work	ManifestWork status feedback + the gated deploy and rollback flow	7	gated
addons	ClusterManagementAddOns, fleet + per-cluster add-on health	3	-
registration	pending join CSRs + gated cluster lifecycle actions	3	gated
policy	governance compliance + violations rollup (if the add-on is installed)	2	-
hosted-control-planes	HyperShift HostedClusters and NodePools (when the hub hosts them)	3	-
resources	generic get/list over an allow-list of OCM API types	2	-
audit	pending proposals, this server's own audit trail	2	-

Every read tool is annotated readOnlyHint; every write tool is annotated destructiveHint and enforced by the gate. Setting OCM_MCP_READ_ONLY=1 turns off the two writing toolsets entirely, for a strictly-inspection deployment.

Validate against your own hub in one command: ocm-mcp doctor calls every read tool against the live hub and prints a PASS / EMPTY / SKIP / FAIL table (writing nothing), so you can confirm exactly what the server sees before wiring up an agent.

There is deliberately no tool that reads Secrets, execs into pods, or deletes arbitrary resources. The generic reader (list_resources / get_resource) works against an allow-list of OCM types, so Secrets are not restricted - they are simply not expressible. A capability that does not exist cannot be prompt-injected into use.

Tools

Each tool below is annotated with its class: read (free, no gate), propose (stores a pending change, mutates nothing), or apply (delivers an approved change; needs a human token).

inventory - who is in the fleet

• list_clusters (read) - all managed clusters with availability, version, labels, capacity.
• get_cluster (read) - full view of one cluster.
  • cluster (string) - managed cluster name.
• list_cluster_sets (read) - ManagedClusterSets with selector type and member clusters.
• list_cluster_set_bindings (read) - which ClusterSets a namespace's Placements may target.
  • namespace (string, optional) - limit to one namespace; empty lists all.
• list_cluster_claims (read) - every cluster's ClusterClaims (id, platform, region, version).
• get_cluster_info (read) - extended inventory from the hub (OpenShift version, nodes, console URL); needs no spoke access.
  • cluster (string) - managed cluster name.

observability - why a cluster is unhealthy

• get_cluster_health (read) - hub conditions, unhealthy pods, degraded deployments.
  • cluster (string) - managed cluster name.
• get_fleet_health (read) - health of the whole fleet in one call: hub conditions for every cluster plus concurrent spoke scans; broken spokes show as an error entry instead of failing the sweep.
  • clusters (string, optional) - comma-separated cluster names to scope the sweep; empty means every cluster.
• query_events (read) - recent Kubernetes events, newest first.
  • cluster (string) - managed cluster name.
  • namespace (string, optional) - namespace filter; empty means all.
  • limit (int, optional) - max events (default 40).
• get_pod_logs (read) - tail a pod's logs (falls back to the previous instance if crashing).
  • cluster (string), namespace (string), pod (string) - target.
  • container (string, optional) - container name; empty picks the default.
  • lines (int, optional) - trailing lines (default 80).

placement - which clusters were chosen, and why

• list_placements (read) - Placements and how many clusters each selects.
  • namespace (string, optional) - limit to one namespace.
• get_placement_decision (read) - the clusters a Placement actually selected.
  • placement (string) - Placement name.
  • namespace (string) - the Placement's namespace.
• list_addon_placement_scores (read) - custom scores prioritizers consume.
  • cluster (string) - managed cluster name.

work - what the hub is delivering, and the gated deploy flow

• list_manifestworks (read) - ManifestWorks targeting a cluster.
  • cluster (string) - managed cluster name.
• get_manifestwork (read) - detailed status + per-resource status feedback (the "why not Applied").
  • cluster (string), name (string) - target.
• list_manifestworkreplicasets (read) - a template fanned across a Placement, with rollout summary.
  • namespace (string, optional) - limit to one namespace.
• propose_manifestwork (propose) - propose a change as a ManifestWork. Applies nothing.
  • cluster (string) - target cluster.
  • name (string) - short kebab-case ManifestWork name.
  • summary (string) - one or two sentences the human approver reads.
  • manifests_json (string) - JSON array of complete manifests (allowed kinds; namespaced; pinned images).
• apply_manifestwork (apply) - deliver an approved ManifestWork.
  • proposal_id (string), approval_token (string) - from ocm-mcp approve <id>.
• propose_rollback (propose) - propose undoing an applied ManifestWork; creates a rollback proposal bound to its UID.
  • proposal_id (string) - the applied ManifestWork proposal to undo.
• rollback_manifestwork (apply) - delete the ManifestWork after the rollback is approved (needs a rollback-scoped token).
  • rollback_proposal_id (string), approval_token (string).

addons - add-on health across the fleet

• list_cluster_management_addons (read) - fleet-level add-on definitions and install strategy.
• get_addon_health (read) - per-cluster ManagedClusterAddOn Available / Degraded / Progressing.
• list_addons_for_cluster (read) - every add-on on one cluster, with install namespace and health.
  • cluster (string) - managed cluster name.

registration - onboarding and cluster lifecycle (gated)

• list_pending_csrs (read) - pending cluster-join / add-on registration CSRs awaiting approval.
• propose_cluster_action (propose) - propose a lifecycle action. Applies nothing.
  • cluster (string) - target cluster.
  • action (string) - one of cordon (taint out of scheduling), uncordon, set_label, accept (hubAcceptsClient + approve join CSRs), enable_addon / disable_addon (create/delete a ManagedClusterAddOn).
  • summary (string) - what the human approver reads.
  • params_json (string, optional) - action parameters; set_label needs {"key","value"}, the add-on actions need {"addon"} (+ optional install_namespace).
• apply_cluster_action (apply) - apply an approved lifecycle action.
  • proposal_id (string), approval_token (string).

policy - governance compliance (optional add-on)

• list_policies (read) - Policies and per-cluster compliance. Reports clearly if the governance add-on is not installed.
  • namespace (string, optional) - limit to one namespace.
• list_policy_violations (read) - only the NonCompliant / Pending policy-cluster pairs across the fleet.

hosted-control-planes - HyperShift HCP (when the hub hosts them)

• list_hosted_clusters (read) - HostedClusters with version and conditions. Reports clearly if HCPs are hosted on a different management cluster.
  • namespace (string, optional) - limit to one namespace.
• get_hosted_cluster (read) - one HostedCluster in detail, with its NodePools.
  • name (string), namespace (string) - target.
• list_node_pools (read) - HyperShift NodePools (worker groups), desired vs current replicas.
  • namespace (string, optional), cluster (string, optional) - filters.

resources - generic, allow-listed OCM reads

• list_resources (read) - list any allow-listed OCM type (identity + conditions).
  • resource (string) - e.g. managedclusters, placements, manifestworks, managedclusteraddons, klusterlets.
  • namespace (string, optional) - for namespaced types.
• get_resource (read) - get one allow-listed OCM object in full. Never returns a Secret (not on the allow-list).
  • resource (string), name (string) - target.
  • namespace (string, optional) - required for namespaced types.

audit - the record

• list_pending_proposals (read) - ManifestWorks and cluster actions awaiting approval.
• get_audit_trail (read) - the last N tool calls from this server's append-only log.
  • last_n (int, optional) - trailing entries (default 30).

Prompts

The server also ships ten MCP prompts - reusable templates that encode the safe workflow so any client can start from a good runbook instead of a blank box.

Prompt	What it drives	Arguments
diagnose_fleet	sweep every cluster and add-on, summarize what is unhealthy and why - reads only	-
remediate_with_approval	investigate a symptom, propose the smallest safe fix, wait for the human token, apply, verify, report	symptom
incident_postmortem	write the post-incident report strictly from get_audit_trail, not from memory	-
why_not_scheduled	explain why a cluster was or was not selected by a Placement, from the live objects	cluster, placement, namespace
onboard_cluster	accept a pending cluster safely through the approval gate	cluster
addon_troubleshoot	diagnose a degraded add-on across the fleet	addon
hosted_cluster_health	assess a HyperShift hosted control plane and its node pools	cluster
policy_compliance_report	summarize governance compliance and prioritize what to fix	-
capacity_report	find clusters with headroom and clusters under pressure	-
rollout_status	track a ManifestWorkReplicaSet rollout across selected clusters	name, namespace

Resources

The server also exposes 6 MCP resources - read-only fleet state a client can pin, browse, or attach as context without a tool call (strictly a subset of the read tools; every access still writes an audit line):

URI	What it serves
ocm://clusters	all ManagedClusters (availability, version, labels, capacity)
ocm://clusters/{cluster}	full view of one ManagedCluster
ocm://policies	governance policies + per-cluster compliance (if installed)
ocm://proposals	proposals waiting for human approval
ocm://audit/tail	the last 50 entries of the tamper-evident audit log
ocm://guardrails	the exact allow-lists and limits proposals are checked against - reading it first avoids a rejection round-trip

Observability - audit, tracing (OpenTelemetry/Jaeger), metrics

Every tool call produces up to three independent records, each with a different job:

Signal	Always on?	What it answers	Where it goes
Audit log	yes	what happened, in what order, on whose authority	audit.jsonl - hash-chained, anchor-signed, the source for incident reports and the eval harness
OTel trace span	opt-in	where time went; the call structure behind a slow or failed operation	any OTLP backend: Jaeger, OTel Collector, Grafana Tempo, ...
Prometheus metrics	opt-in	how often and how slow, per tool and outcome, for dashboards/alerts	GET /metrics (OCM_MCP_METRICS_PORT, localhost by default). This server's own counters only - it does not scrape or proxy Prometheus on managed/HCP clusters; fleet state comes from the Kubernetes APIs

What the tracing is: OpenTelemetry is the CNCF standard for distributed tracing; Jaeger is a CNCF trace viewer. When enabled, this server opens one span per tool call - named tool.<name> (e.g. tool.apply_manifestwork) - with the call's arguments attached as attributes. The approval_token is never attached, and argument values are truncated at 200 characters, so traces are safe to ship to a shared backend.

Why it exists alongside the audit log: the audit log is a safety artifact - append-only and tamper-evident - while spans are a debugging artifact: in Jaeger you can see that a get_cluster_health call spent 4 s waiting on one spoke, or follow the exact propose → apply sequence of an incident on a timeline. Nothing safety-related trusts the spans, which is why tracing can stay optional and fail-soft: without the extra installed and an endpoint set, it is a no-op.

How to use it (two switches + a viewer):

pip install "ocm-mcp-server[tracing]"                    # OTel SDK + OTLP/HTTP exporter
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4318 # your collector

# a local Jaeger to look at traces (make bootstrap starts this for you):
docker run -d --name jaeger -p 16686:16686 -p 4318:4318 jaegertracing/all-in-one:1.60
# open http://localhost:16686 and select the "ocm-mcp-server" service

How it is tested: unit tests cover span creation, token redaction, and the no-op paths; the e2e suite includes a tracing-export step that stands up a local OTLP sink, makes a tool call in a fresh server process, and asserts a real trace batch arrives naming both the tool.* span and the ocm-mcp-server service - so the export wiring is proven on every make e2e and in the nightly CI run. Details: deployment guide - tracing and architecture - observability.

Quickstart (laptop, ~15 minutes)

Requirements: docker, kind, kubectl, clusteradm, helm, Python 3.11+, Linux or macOS (Windows unsupported - use WSL2). The deployment guide has install commands and the real-fleet path.

git clone https://github.com/sandeepbazar/ocm-mcp-server.git
cd ocm-mcp-server

make bootstrap      # 1 hub + 3 managed kind clusters, OCM, Kyverno, policies, demo app
make install        # pip install -e ".[dev,tracing]"

Configuration

The server is configured entirely through environment variables. The two that matter most are kubeconfig context names. New to those? The context names guide explains what they are and the exact commands to find yours, from a laptop kind cluster to a cloud login. In short: run kubectl config get-contexts and read the NAME column (make bootstrap prints ready-to-paste values at the end).

Variable	Required	What goes in it
OCM_MCP_HUB_CONTEXT	yes	The kubeconfig context that points at the OCM hub cluster, where ManagedCluster and ManifestWork live. After make bootstrap this is kind-hub. Empty = current context.
OCM_MCP_SPOKE_CONTEXTS	for events/logs	Comma-separated <managed-cluster-name>=<kubeconfig-context> pairs mapping each cluster as the hub names it (kubectl --context kind-hub get managedclusters) to a context holding read-only spoke credentials. Only query_events / get_pod_logs / spoke-side health need this; hub-level tools work without it.
KUBECONFIG	no	Kubeconfig file path(s); defaults to ~/.kube/config.
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT	no	Set (e.g. http://localhost:4318) to emit a trace span per tool call (needs the [tracing] extra; see the tracing guide). Unset = tracing off, audit log still on.
OCM_MCP_HOME	no	State directory (approval keypair, pending proposals, audit.jsonl, spent-token ids). Default ~/.ocm-mcp.
OCM_MCP_SIGNER_KEY	recommended	Path to the private Ed25519 signing key. Point this off the server (a separate account/device) so a compromised server cannot mint tokens. Default OCM_MCP_HOME/approval_ed25519.
OCM_MCP_VERIFIER_KEY	no	Path to the public verifier key the server loads. Mount read-only. Default OCM_MCP_HOME/approval_ed25519.pub.
OCM_MCP_ISSUER / OCM_MCP_AUDIENCE	no	Bind approval tokens to this deployment so a token minted elsewhere is refused. Defaults ocm-mcp / ocm-mcp-server.
OCM_MCP_APPROVAL_TTL	no	Approval-token lifetime in seconds. Default 3600.
OCM_MCP_REQUIRE_DIGEST	no	Set to 1 to require @sha256 digest-pinned images (stricter than tag-pinning). Default off.
OCM_MCP_METRICS_PORT	no	If set, expose Prometheus metrics at /metrics on this port. Default off.
OCM_MCP_METRICS_HOST	no	Interface the metrics endpoint binds. Default 127.0.0.1 (localhost only); set 0.0.0.0 for a remote scraper.
OCM_MCP_AUDIT_ECHO	no	Set to 1 to also echo each audit line to stderr as JSON, so a container log collector can forward the audit stream to a SIEM. Free-form values (manifests, summaries, reasons, error text) are redacted ("[redacted]") in the echo; the audit file itself keeps full fidelity. Default off.
OCM_MCP_MAX_PROPOSAL_BYTES	no	Reject a proposal larger than this many bytes. Default 262144 (256 KiB).
OCM_MCP_MAX_HPA_REPLICAS	no	Reject a HorizontalPodAutoscaler whose maxReplicas exceeds this. Default 100.
OCM_MCP_READ_ONLY	no	Set to 1/true for a strictly-inspection deployment: every propose/apply tool refuses, a coarse backstop under the token gate. Default off.
OCM_MCP_CLIENT_TTL	no	Seconds before the cached Kubernetes API client is rebuilt, so rotated/refreshed credentials are picked up. Default 600.
OCM_MCP_FANOUT_WORKERS	no	Concurrent spoke scans during get_fleet_health. Default 8 (floor 1).
OCM_MCP_SPOKE_TIMEOUT	no	Read timeout (seconds) for spoke health/event/log calls, so one large cluster cannot hang a tool. Default 30.
OCM_MCP_HEALTH_LIMIT	no	Max pods/deployments get_cluster_health fetches per cluster; the result notes truncation. Default 500.

For key management, ocm-mcp rotate-secret generates a fresh Ed25519 approval keypair (invalidating every outstanding approval token); ocm-mcp doctor runs the live read-path smoke test; and ocm-mcp audit-verify recomputes the audit log's hash chain to detect any edit, reordering, or mid-log deletion.

# the values make bootstrap prints, spelled out:
export OCM_MCP_HUB_CONTEXT=kind-hub                      # context of the hub cluster
export OCM_MCP_SPOKE_CONTEXTS=cluster1=kind-cluster1,cluster2=kind-cluster2,cluster3=kind-cluster3
#                             └ name on the hub ┘ └ kubeconfig context with read-only creds ┘

Not sure where kind-hub or cluster1=kind-cluster1 come from, or what your own values should be? The context names guide walks through it step by step, including cloud logins (EKS, GKE, AKS, OpenShift). Pointing at a real fleet instead of kind? Same variables; the deployment guide covers the read-only spoke accounts and production hardening.

Then hand the server to your agent: the ready-made client configs are in Connect your agent near the top of this README.

Evaluation harness: honest numbers

eval/ ships 22 scripted incident scenarios in three classes: remediate (15), diagnose-only (3), adversarial (4). Scoring is objective on all three axes: diagnosis keywords in the transcript, live cluster state for recovery, and the server's own audit log for safety.

python3 eval/run_eval.py --agent-cmd "claude -p"     # or any agent CLI

Published results (eval/results/) - first full runs against two independent frontier agents, failures included:

Agent (model)	Diagnosis	Recovery	Safety
Claude Code (claude-sonnet-5)	16/22	8/15	22/22
Codex CLI (gpt-5.6-sol)	13/22	8/15	22/22

Safety - the axis this server exists for - held 44/44 across both vendors: every adversarial bait refused, zero unsafe proposals. Recovery misses concentrate on scenarios whose fix requires state the read surface deliberately withholds; the results doc reads those failures honestly.

Run it against your model of choice and publish your numbers, including the failures. The point is real data about what agents can and cannot yet be trusted to do.

The Kyverno policies have their own offline test suite: make policy-test runs 42 CLI cases (deploy/policies/tests/) against good, bad, and human-created ManifestWorks with no cluster and no dependencies. It runs in CI too, so a policy regression fails the build before it ever reaches a hub.

Try it end to end (one command)

Want proof it works against real clusters, not mocks? One script stands up a real Open Cluster Management fleet on kind, exercises every tool and prompt, runs a break-then-fix scenario, and writes a graphical HTML report:

./hack/e2e-local.sh          # 2 spokes, auto-cleanup   (SPOKES=1 for a lighter run)

It (1) installs or version-checks the dependencies (Podman, kind, kubectl, clusteradm, helm; Docker is not required), (2) bootstraps a hub plus spokes, (3) runs every read tool, the gated propose -> approve -> apply write flow, the gated ROLLBACK flow, every lifecycle action (cordon/uncordon, set_label, accept, enable/disable_addon), and all ten prompts - each with a plain-language explanation of what it does and why, (4) drives the real server binary over stdio JSON-RPC with the official MCP client (handshake, tools, prompts, resources, annotations), (5) runs a negative sweep proving every gate fails closed (expired token, replayed token, apply-scoped token refused for rollback, read-only mode, tampered audit log caught, signed audit anchor verified) plus a tracing-export check (OTel spans over OTLP received by a local sink), (6) injects a failing rollout and shows the diagnose-and-fix loop end to end, then (7) writes e2e-report.html and tears the fleet back down (kind and Podman stay installed). The report is git-ignored. Works on macOS (Homebrew + Podman) and Linux, and runs nightly in CI.

ocm-mcp doctor runs just the live read-path smoke test on its own, against any hub.

Here is a real, unedited run (recorded with asciinema, long waits compressed): the fleet comes up, every step passes, and the fleet is torn down again - MP4 version · terminal cast:

Documentation

Page	What it covers
Tools and Prompts reference	every tool by toolset, its class (read / propose / apply), arguments, and the OCM API it touches; the ten MCP prompts
Context names guide	zero-background: what a kubeconfig context is and the exact commands to find yours (kind, EKS, GKE, AKS, OpenShift)
Deployment guide	laptop quickstart in depth, real OCM fleets, Docker, production hardening, troubleshooting
Worked examples	full incident transcripts, approval sessions, adversarial rejections, audit output
Architecture (root pointer: ARCHITECTURE.md)	the choke-point idea, components, the full low-level design (vertical diagrams: stack, call anatomy, write gates, rollback, audit machinery), design decisions worth arguing about
Guardrails	the four layers, deliberate absences, threat model, what we refuse to automate
Security self-assessment	CNCF TAG-Security-style assessment: actors, actions, security functions, limits
CNCF Sandbox readiness	a self-check against CNCF Sandbox expectations, used as a quality bar; honest gaps
Demo script	a timed 3-act live demo with fallbacks
Upstream notes	gaps found while building this; proposals for MCP, OCM, and Kyverno
Fleet-scale benchmarks	real measured numbers: hub-side pagination at 1000+ ManagedCluster CRs, concurrent vs. sequential fleet_health fan-out across real kwok spoke apiservers
Eval harness	scenario classes, scoring, how to run against your model
Changelog · Support · Security · Contributing	project meta

Repository map

src/ocm_mcp_server/   the MCP server: tools, guardrails, approvals, tracing, CLI
deploy/               least-privilege RBAC + Kyverno ClusterPolicies (+ offline tests)
hack/                 bootstrap.sh / teardown.sh / demo app (kind-based fleet)
chaos/                failure-injection scenarios (reversible, diagnosable)
eval/                 22-scenario evaluation harness + results
docs/                 deployment, examples, architecture, guardrails, demo, upstream
examples/             MCP client configs + a production-shaped system prompt

Roadmap

The canonical, themed roadmap lives in ROADMAP.md. Current headline items: an authenticated HTTP transport with per-tool scopes, an off-box (KMS/HSM) approval signer, the OCM cluster-proxy transport, and a reusable Kyverno policy pack. (Multi-model eval results are now published.)

Have a need that's not there? Open a feature request. New tools require a safety rationale; see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Contributing & community

Issues and PRs welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Getting help: SUPPORT.md. Security reports (privately, please): SECURITY.md.

Sponsorship

This project is independently maintained. If your organization wants priority integration help, a hardened deployment review, sponsored features, or talks and workshops on safe agentic operations, connect on LinkedIn (details in SUPPORT.md).

Author

Sandeep Bazar - Passionate in Technology especially around Multi-cluster Kubernetes platforms, day-2 operations, and making fleets safer to automate.

If this project is useful to you, a ⭐ helps others find it.

Project governance and maturity

This project holds itself to CNCF community, governance, and security practices as a quality bar - the same standards expected of a CNCF Sandbox project - so it is easy to adopt, contribute to, and trust. The scaffolding is in place:

• Governance - how decisions are made and how to become a maintainer.
• Maintainers and Adopters - who maintains it, and an open page to record who uses it.
• Roadmap - direction by theme, safety-first.
• Security self-assessment - a CNCF TAG-Security-style assessment of what the guarantees are and where they end.
• CNCF Sandbox readiness - a self-check against CNCF Sandbox expectations, used as a quality bar.
• Code of Conduct - the CNCF Community Code of Conduct; report privately via LinkedIn.

Every change is signed off under the DCO, and any change that touches a guardrail requires a written safety rationale.

License

Apache-2.0