Getting started

1. Sign in and create a control plane

1. Open app.ctrlplane.run and sign in with GitHub. During early access, new accounts wait for approval; you can close the page and come back.
2. Choose Create control plane and give it a name. Names are prefixed with your login, so dev becomes <you>-dev.
3. It’s ready in about a minute, when it shows Ready.

2. Install kubelogin

Your kubeconfig signs you in through your browser with kubelogin, a kubectl plugin. Install it once:

kubectl krew install oidc-login                 # with krew
brew install int128/kubelogin/kubelogin         # or with Homebrew

3. Download the kubeconfig and connect

Open the control plane and choose Download kubeconfig. Then:

export KUBECONFIG=~/Downloads/<you>-dev.kubeconfig
kubectl auth whoami          # opens your browser once to sign in
kubectl get crds             # empty for now

You’re signed in as github:<your login>, and commands default to the namespace named after your control plane. See Access and authentication for how this works.

4. Add your API types

Install your operator’s CRDs, either in the site (API → Add CRDs: paste YAML, upload a file, or give a release URL) or with kubectl:

kubectl apply -f \
  https://github.com/example/operator/releases/download/v1.0.0/crds.yaml

5. Deploy your controller

In Controllers → Deploy a controller, give it a name and your operator’s image, for example ghcr.io/example/operator:v1.0.0. ctrlplane runs it with a kubeconfig for your control plane; most operators built with controller-runtime work unchanged. See Controllers.

6. Create a resource

kubectl apply -f my-resource.yaml
kubectl get <kind> -w

Your controller sees it and acts on it. Its logs and metrics are under Observability.

Next

• Your operator needs to reach something in your own network? Turn on a tunnel.
• Want your own dashboards? Use the data in Grafana.