Learn: the Environment API
How environments get provisioned on this platform — the Crossplane machine that turns one short YAML claim into a whole running footprint: a namespace, an image registry, AWS permissions, and guardrails.
Audience: platform engineers. Developers only need the 2-minute view at the end of the orientation. Already fluent in Crossplane? Go straight to the Reference — a terse lookup for readers who already hold the model.
Before you start: know what a container is, and that Kubernetes has YAML-described resources it makes real. That’s the whole floor.
Read in this order
Section titled “Read in this order”- Orientation — start here. Watch the real
alpha-shop-devenvironment get built end to end, and leave able to explain how it works. - Reference — the full claim spec, everything the Composition provisions, a glossary, the gotchas that bite, and links for learning Crossplane itself.
- Cheatsheet — run-verified commands to inspect, debug, and verify an environment
(
kubectl/crossplane/aws), with access notes.
Try it hands-on
Section titled “Try it hands-on”- Tutorial: render your first environment — a guided, offline walkthrough: render a real environment, read its footprint, change it, watch the output move. No cluster, no access. (Provisional — the live-provisioning steps light up when the learning sandbox ships.)
Deep dives
Section titled “Deep dives”Depth on one hard mechanism, once you have the model:
- How the Composition renders — the three-function pipeline, the go-template, and how one claim plus the cluster’s constants become the whole footprint. For operating or extending the Composition.
Then, to go deeper on the real system
Section titled “Then, to go deeper on the real system”- Architecture (as-built): Crossplane Environment API
- Onboard/operate an environment: the
environment-onboardingskill + runbook - Change the machine itself: the
crossplane-composition-authoringskill