clavex-operator

A native Kubernetes Operator for Clavex: manage OIDC/SAML clients, identity providers, roles, groups, webhooks, org-level security policies and auth-policy rules declaratively with kubectl apply, instead of the imperative clavexctl org apply CLI workflow. Reconciliation is continuous (drift between the CR and the live Admin API state is detected and corrected automatically, not just at apply time).

Description

clavexctl already ships a Terraform-style IaC workflow (cmd/clavexctl/iac.go: export/diff/plan/apply against the Clavex Admin API v2). This operator extends the same declarative model to Kubernetes: each Clavex resource type is a CRD in the clavex.clavex.eu/v1alpha1 group, reconciled by a single cluster-wide controller-manager against the Admin API using an org-scoped API key (see spec.authSecretRef on every CRD — the controller never holds cross-org/superadmin credentials of its own).

Available CRDs: ClavexClient (OIDC client), ClavexIdentityProvider (OIDC/SAML upstream IdP), ClavexRole, ClavexGroup, ClavexWebhook, ClavexOrg (password policy / rate limits), ClavexAuthPolicy (conditional access rules).

See docs/operator.md for a full walkthrough with kubectl apply examples for every CRD, and the design rationale in the package-level doc comments under api/v1alpha1/.

Getting Started

Quick install (released bundle)

Each tagged release publishes a consolidated install.yaml (CRDs + RBAC + controller-manager Deployment, with the image pinned to that release's version) as a GitHub Release asset. Install the latest stable release:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/clavex-eu/clavex-operator/releases/latest/download/install.yaml

Or pin a specific version:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/clavex-eu/clavex-operator/releases/download/v0.1.0/install.yaml

The bundle still requires cert-manager in the cluster (see Prerequisites) and a manager-config override supplying your Clavex Admin API URL (see "Configure the Clavex Admin API URL"). The pinned image lives at ghcr.io/clavex-eu/clavex-operator:<tag>.

Prerequisites

• go version v1.24.6+
• docker version 17.03+.
• kubectl version v1.11.3+.
• Access to a Kubernetes v1.11.3+ cluster.
• cert-manager installed in the target cluster (required, not optional): the base manifest ships a validating admission webhook for ClavexClient (checks authSecretRef at admission time), and cert-manager issues/rotates its serving certificate as well as the metrics endpoint's TLS certificate. make deploy/kubectl apply -k config/default will fail (no matches for kind "Certificate") without it.

Configure the Clavex Admin API URL

The manager requires CLAVEX_SERVER_URL at startup (fails fast if unset). The base manifest ships a manager-config ConfigMap with an intentionally invalid placeholder so a forgotten override is caught immediately rather than silently pointing at the wrong Admin API. Override it in your own Kustomize overlay before deploying:

# my-overlay/kustomization.yaml
resources:
  - github.com/clavex-eu/clavex-operator/config/default
configMapGenerator:
  - name: manager-config
    behavior: merge
    literals:
      - clavex-server-url=https://admin.acme.example

kubectl apply -k my-overlay/

Optional: Prometheus metrics via ServiceMonitor

config/prometheus/ provides a ServiceMonitor scraping the manager's TLS-secured metrics endpoint (cert-manager issued). It is not included in config/default because it hard-depends on the Prometheus Operator CRDs being installed in the cluster — enabling it on a cluster without Prometheus Operator breaks kubectl apply -k config/default (no matches for kind "ServiceMonitor"). If your cluster runs Prometheus Operator, add it via your own overlay:

# my-overlay/kustomization.yaml
resources:
  - github.com/clavex-eu/clavex-operator/config/default
  - github.com/clavex-eu/clavex-operator/config/prometheus

To Deploy on the cluster

Build and push your image to the location specified by IMG:

make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/clavex-operator:tag

NOTE: This image ought to be published in the personal registry you specified. And it is required to have access to pull the image from the working environment. Make sure you have the proper permission to the registry if the above commands don’t work.

Install the CRDs into the cluster:

make install

Deploy the Manager to the cluster with the image specified by IMG:

make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/clavex-operator:tag

NOTE: If you encounter RBAC errors, you may need to grant yourself cluster-admin privileges or be logged in as admin.

Create instances of your solution You can apply the samples (examples) from the config/sample:

kubectl apply -k config/samples/

NOTE: Ensure that the samples has default values to test it out.

To Uninstall

Delete the instances (CRs) from the cluster:

kubectl delete -k config/samples/

Delete the APIs(CRDs) from the cluster:

make uninstall

UnDeploy the controller from the cluster:

make undeploy

Project Distribution

Following the options to release and provide this solution to the users.

By providing a bundle with all YAML files

1. Build the installer for the image built and published in the registry:

make build-installer IMG=<some-registry>/clavex-operator:tag

NOTE: The makefile target mentioned above generates an 'install.yaml' file in the dist directory. This file contains all the resources built with Kustomize, which are necessary to install this project without its dependencies.

2. Using the installer

The CI release workflow runs this target on every vX.Y.Z tag and attaches the resulting install.yaml to the matching GitHub Release (it is not committed to any branch, so no branch ever reflects a floating build). Users install from the release asset rather than from a branch:

# latest stable release
kubectl apply -f https://github.com/clavex-eu/clavex-operator/releases/latest/download/install.yaml

# a specific pinned version
kubectl apply -f https://github.com/clavex-eu/clavex-operator/releases/download/v0.1.0/install.yaml

By providing a Helm Chart

1. Build the chart using the optional helm plugin

kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm/v2-alpha

2. See that a chart was generated under 'dist/chart', and users can obtain this solution from there.

NOTE: If you change the project, you need to update the Helm Chart using the same command above to sync the latest changes. Furthermore, if you create webhooks, you need to use the above command with the '--force' flag and manually ensure that any custom configuration previously added to 'dist/chart/values.yaml' or 'dist/chart/manager/manager.yaml' is manually re-applied afterwards.

Contributing

// TODO(user): Add detailed information on how you would like others to contribute to this project

NOTE: Run make help for more information on all potential make targets

More information can be found via the Kubebuilder Documentation

License

Copyright 2026 Clavex.

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.