🧩 SuperKind — Kind, but Super-Charged

SuperKind is a Go-based CLI tool that provides a "super-charged" local Kubernetes experience. It automates the setup of essential infrastructure (Ingress, Cert-Manager, Registries, Caching) using native Go SDKs for Kind, Docker, and Helm.

You get:

✅ Opinionated convenience — preconfigured defaults and native Go plugins.

⚙️ Full flexibility — still 100% Kind underneath. You can use the regular kind CLI if you want.

🧩 Multi-node local clusters — simulate realistic production topologies.

🪣 Pull-through registry caching — speed up local builds and avoid repeated remote pulls.

📦 Local registry integration — powered by a local Zot registry for fast, reliable image pushes and pulls without Docker Hub throttling.

🔌 Native Go Plugins — programmatically install epinio, olm, keda, velero, argocd, and more.

🌐 Fallback UI — automatically serves a friendly web landing page for any unmatched Ingress host on localhost and *.localhost.

🧱 Works anywhere — runs seamlessly with Docker Desktop and Podman Desktop.

SuperKind is designed for developers who already use Kind, but want a smarter, faster local setup — with CA trust, ingress, registry caching, metrics, cert-manager, and more baked in.

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🧰 Prerequisites

Install these first:

Tool	Description
Go	Version 1.24+
Docker	Container runtime
Kind	Local Kubernetes in Docker
Kubectl	Kubernetes CLI
Helm	Kubernetes package manager

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🚀 Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/josephaw1022/SuperKind.git
cd SuperKind
make install

This builds the superkind binary, installs it to ~/.local/bin, and sets up your shell environment (alias: sk).

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⚙️ Commands Overview

You can use either superkind or the shorter sk alias.

Command	Description
sk	Show help or status of the default cluster
sk up	Create or update the default cluster (sk-cluster)
sk up [name]	Create a new cluster named sk-[name]
sk status [name]	Show status of sk-[name]
sk delete [name]	Delete sk-[name]
sk list	List all SuperKind clusters (prefixed with sk-)
sk plugin	Manage native Go plugins (install, status, uninstall)

🧩 Example session

# Create a new cluster named sk-dev
sk up dev

# Install ArgoCD via native Go plugin
sk plugin argocd install

# Check cluster status
sk status dev

# List all SuperKind clusters
sk list

# Delete the cluster
sk delete dev

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🛠 Development (Makefile)

The project uses a Makefile for standard tasks:

make build    # Build binary to bin/superkind
make test     # Run unit tests
make install  # Install to ~/.local/bin and setup aliases
make tidy     # Tidy Go modules
make clean    # Remove build artifacts

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🧱 Architecture

SuperKind bootstraps a full local environment using native Go SDKs:

• Kind cluster with multiple nodes and prewired registry mirrors.
• Native Root CA generation (no openssl CLI dependencies).
• Cert-Manager and a local Root CA for HTTPS ingress.
• Ingress-NGINX preconfigured with NodePort 30080 / 30443.
• Zot based local registry (localhost:5001).
• Pull-through cache registries for docker.io, quay.io, ghcr.io, and mcr.microsoft.com.
• Prometheus stack for built-in metrics and observability.
• Native Go Plugins — Programmatic installation logic for various K8s tools.

Everything is modular, idempotent, and executed via Go code.

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✅ Summary

Run sk up to spin up clusters, sk list to list them, and sk delete to clean them up — all locally, fast, and fully automated.