[danielle-mustillo]

Why

A new kagent install has no example agent and no skills to start from, and the UI has no way to add a skill to an agent. Today skills can only be set with kubectl.

What changed

Built-ins in the chart. A new builtins values group gives a new install a starting point:

• builtins.harness: a Go ADK Harness named kagent on the chart's worker pool.
• builtins.k8sAgent: an Agent named k8s-agent on that Harness. It uses the kagent-tools Kubernetes tools and the k8s-troubleshooting skill. Tools that change the cluster wait for approval.
• builtins.skills: the skills the UI offers. builtins.skills.image with builtins.skills.list offers skills from another image instead.
• builtins.enabled: false turns all three off. Each also has its own enabled.

The Harness and the Agent need substrateWorkerPool.create, which kagent install sets.

Skills come from kagent-tools. kagent does not build a skills image of its own.

• The kagent-tools dependency goes from 0.3.0 to 0.3.1, the first release that ships skills, so the skills match the tool server the chart deploys.
• The UI offers three of them: k8s-troubleshooting, helm-release-management and istio-traffic-debugging. The image's other skills need Argo Rollouts, Cilium, Kubescape or Prometheus, so the list leaves them out.
• helm/kagent/files/builtin-skills.json holds the list and the kagent-tools image pinned by digest. make builtin-skills-catalog regenerates it from the image.
• The chart passes the list to the UI as KAGENT_UI_BUILTIN_SKILLS. global.imageRegistry mirrors the image.

Skills in the agent template form.

• A user can pick a built-in skill, or add their own from an OCI image (pinned by digest), Git (URL and full commit) or S3 (with object version), with an optional path.
• Saving writes spec.skills. The form rejects what the CRD or the runtime would reject, and each message names the skill.
• A built-in skill saved from an older kagent-tools image shows "Older version" and an Update button.
• plugins and promptTemplate, which the form does not show, are kept on save.

Limits

• A Git or S3 skill source keeps an Agent from becoming Ready until fix(substrate): let the golden actor fetch git and S3 skill sources #3435 merges. The form offers them anyway.
• A skill only names tools. An Agent a user builds must also bind the tools its skills use.
• helm upgrade --reuse-values from an older release keeps the old chart's defaults, which have no builtins values. The chart then renders no built-ins instead of failing. --reset-then-reuse-values picks up the new defaults and turns them on.
• CI e2e sets builtins.harness.enabled: false, because the lifecycle suite applies its own Harness named kagent. CI also turns kagent-tools off, so CI does not run k8s-agent.

Testing

• helm unittest helm/kagent: 378 tests pass.
• yarn typecheck, vitest (810 tests), the UI entrypoint Go tests and the mock Playwright agent-templates journey pass.
• On a Kind cluster running this chart:
  • The UI serves the three skills, and the agent template form lists them.
  • k8s-agent is Ready with its skill from ghcr.io/kagent-dev/kagent/tools@sha256:607cb0ac…. Asked about a crash-looping pod, it called load_skill for k8s-troubleshooting and got the kagent-tools text back.
  • builtins.enabled=false removed the Harness, the Agent and the UI skill list. Turning it back on restored them, and k8s-agent became Ready again.
  • An upgrade from main with --reuse-values succeeded with no built-ins. A following --reset-then-reuse-values upgrade brought them back, and k8s-agent became Ready.

[danielle-mustillo]

• Agent template form: before, there is no way to add a skill. After, a Skills field adds a built-in kagent skill (k8s-troubleshooting) from the chart's catalog, or your own OCI, Git or S3 skill.
• Agent template details: before, a template's skills are hidden behind a notice saying to use kubectl. After, each skill is listed with its full source.
• Fresh Helm install: before, there is no Harness and no Agent. After, the chart ships Harness kagent and a Ready k8s-agent with the k8s-troubleshooting skill from the kagent-tools image.

pr3554-reel.mp4

Screenshots

Before: new template form has no Skills field

After: Skills field with a kagent skill

Before: template's skills hidden behind a notice

After: template details list both skills in full

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