Deploying continuo

continuo ships as a single Helm chart, deploy/continuo, that installs every backend service plus optional bundled quickstart datastores (PostgreSQL, Redis, Neo4j, MinIO, Dex). This page is the entry point; the chart’s own README is the authoritative install reference.

Install paths

What is NOT in this repo

The infrastructure that backs the reference production deployment (a Bitnami-based Postgres/Redis/Neo4j stack with Hetzner-specific storage classes) lives in a separate private repository, continuo-infra, deployed manually from its own runbook. From this chart’s point of view that stack is simply “datastores you bring” via the external* values — any equivalently reachable Postgres 15+, Redis 7+, and Neo4j 5.x work the same way.

Licensing of the bundled datastores

continuo itself is Apache-2.0. The chart’s optional quickstart mode (postgresql.enabled, redis.enabled, neo4j.enabled, minio.enabled) pulls upstream container images that carry their own licenses:

These images are pulled and run as separate processes. continuo does not link against, embed, modify, or redistribute their code, so their licenses do not extend to continuo or to your use of it.

If your organisation’s policy prohibits running copyleft-licensed datastores, use the external datastore mode (external* / existingSecret values) and bring your own — that is the supported production configuration anyway.

For the full dependency inventory across Go, npm, and Python, see docs/third-party-licenses.md.

API credentials for python-api nodes

A python-api node can name a Secret in its contract (secret_ref) to receive an API key. The Secret is called continuo-api-<name>, lives in the namespace execution-controller runs Jobs in (its K8S_NAMESPACE, which the chart sets to the release namespace), and is created by the operator: kubectl create secret, an External Secrets Operator ExternalSecret, or a Vault Secrets Operator VaultStaticSecret. The chart neither creates nor reads these Secrets. The continuo-api- prefix is reserved for them: the chart refuses to render when the release name, fullnameOverride or any Secret name in values falls inside it. See python-api nodes.

Releasing from CI (GitHub Actions)

A CD pipeline releases a service with one authenticated HTTPS call to the ui, at https://<continuo-host>/api/v1/releases. It needs no kubeconfig, no SSH access and no stored secret: the workflow proves which repository it runs in with its GitHub Actions OIDC token, and the chart’s ciAuth values say which repository may release which service.

1. Find the repository id

continuo trusts the numeric repository id, never the repository name (a name can be taken over by a new owner after a rename; the id cannot).

gh api repos/OWNER/REPO --jq .id

2. Bind the repository to a service

ciAuth:
  bindings:
    core:                              # the service name the release carries
      - repositoryId: "812345678"      # quoted: a bare number fails the chart's schema
        ref: [refs/heads/main]
        allowBootstrap: true           # first release only; set false afterwards

A binding grants one GitHub identity the right to release one service. Every field you set must match the token; repositoryId is the only required one.

A service may list several bindings; a token that matches any one of them may release it. With no bindings (the default) no pipeline can use the API: ui does not trust the GitHub issuer at all, so every CI token is a 401. A token whose repository matches no binding is refused on every route, including GET /api/v1/current-prod. The other ciAuth keys are issuer (default https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com; GitHub Enterprise Server uses https://<host>/_services/token) and audience, which defaults to the origin of auth.publicUrl (scheme, host and port, no path). Changing ciAuth rolls the ui on helm upgrade.

3. Call the API from the workflow

The workflow requests a token whose audience is the same origin continuo expects, then submits the release and polls it to a terminal status. This example releases a dbt service, so it sends only the three required fields. kind names how continuo reads the service’s artifact: dbt (the default when absent) or python. The first release of a service has no production version to validate against, so it is sent with "bootstrap": true, which needs a binding with allowBootstrap: true. These and the other submit fields are described below.

permissions:
  id-token: write
  contents: read
jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    timeout-minutes: 60
    env:
      # The origin of auth.publicUrl: scheme://host[:port], no path, no trailing slash.
      CONTINUO_URL: https://continuo.example.com
    steps:
      - name: Submit release to continuo
        run: |
          token() {
            curl -sS -H "Authorization: bearer $ACTIONS_ID_TOKEN_REQUEST_TOKEN" \
              "$ACTIONS_ID_TOKEN_REQUEST_URL&audience=$CONTINUO_URL" | jq -r .value
          }
          RELEASE_ID="rel-${GITHUB_SHA::7}-${GITHUB_RUN_NUMBER}"
          curl --fail-with-body -sS -X POST "$CONTINUO_URL/api/v1/releases" \
            -H "Authorization: Bearer $(token)" -H 'content-type: application/json' \
            -d "$(jq -n --arg id "$RELEASE_ID" --arg tag "${GITHUB_SHA::7}" \
                  '{release_id:$id, service:"core", image_tag:$tag}')"
          for _ in $(seq 1 300); do              # 300 polls x 10 s = 50 minutes
            s=$(curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $(token)" \
                  "$CONTINUO_URL/api/v1/releases/$RELEASE_ID") || s='{}'
            [ "$(jq -r .terminal <<<"$s")" = true ] && break
            sleep 10
          done
          jq . <<<"$s"; [ "$(jq -r .status <<<"$s")" = promoted ]

GitHub Actions tokens expire within minutes, so the example asks for a fresh one on every call instead of reusing the first.

The API

All three routes live under /api/v1 on the ui. Each takes Authorization: Bearer <token>; the scheme name is case-insensitive.

Submit body. release_id, service and image_tag are required; bootstrap (a JSON boolean), kind (dbt, the default, or python), repo and commit_sha are optional. Any other field is a 400. release_id must match ^[A-Za-z0-9][A-Za-z0-9._-]{0,127}$: it starts with a letter or digit and continues with letters, digits, ., _ or -, at most 128 characters in all; anything else is a 400. With a CI token, repo and commit_sha are taken from the token (repository and sha): leave them out, or send values equal to the token’s, because a different value is a 403 claim_mismatch. A person calling with their own token (see AUTH.md) must send repo and commit_sha in the body. "bootstrap": true promotes without validation and is for the first release of a service; a CI token may send it only when its binding sets allowBootstrap. Submitting the same release_id again with the same body is idempotent and answers 202; the same release_id with a different service, image_tag, kind, bootstrap flag, repo or commit_sha is a 409 release_kind_conflict, so use a fresh id for a new release.

Release read. The answer carries release_id, service, status, terminal (true once the status is promoted, rejected or superseded), bootstrap, repo, commit_sha, reject_reason, reject_detail, and ui_url, the release’s page in the dashboard. A CI token can read only releases of the services its bindings grant; a release of any other service answers 404 not_found, exactly as a release that does not exist. A pipeline polling for terminal stays well inside the read limit (300 a minute per principal) with one read every few seconds.

Errors. Every failure is JSON, {"error": "<message>", "code": "<code>"}.

Networking

• The ingress host (ingress.host) must be reachable from GitHub-hosted runners. A cluster behind a firewall needs self-hosted runners that can reach it.
• The ui pod fetches the issuer’s signing keys over HTTPS, so it must reach token.actions.githubusercontent.com (or your GitHub Enterprise Server host) on port 443. The chart’s NetworkPolicies restrict the ui’s ingress only, so this works by default; a cluster-wide egress policy or a forced proxy must allow it. While the issuer is unreachable, bearer calls answer 503 auth_unavailable and the browser login is unaffected.
• Where egress must go through a proxy, add HTTPS_PROXY together with NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 to the ui entry’s env in services, plus NO_PROXY covering the in-cluster service names the ui calls (release-controller, run-controller, catalog, agent-chat, agent-remediation, and your IdP when it is in-cluster). The ui runs on Node.js 26, whose built-in fetch honours the proxy variables only when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; without it the key fetch ignores HTTPS_PROXY and tries the issuer directly.

Releasing with your own token

A person calls the same /api/v1 routes with their own bearer token: an ID token from the ui’s login provider, for an identity with the operator role (see AUTH.md). It is valid for at most one hour; mint a new one when a call answers 401.

On a local install with the bundled Dex, forward the ui (the API) and Dex (the token issuer), then trade the demo operator account’s password for a token:

kubectl -n continuo port-forward svc/ui 8090:8090 &
kubectl -n continuo port-forward svc/continuo-dex 5556:5556 &

CLIENT_SECRET=$(kubectl -n continuo get secret continuo-dex -o jsonpath='{.data.client-secret}' | base64 -d)
TOKEN=$(curl -s -u "continuo-ui:${CLIENT_SECRET}" http://localhost:5556/dex/token \
  -d grant_type=password -d scope="openid email profile" \
  -d username=admin@example.com -d password=password | jq -r .id_token)

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" http://localhost:8090/api/v1/current-prod

If echo $TOKEN prints null, the login failed: check the Dex port-forward and the password. A release posted with a person’s token must carry repo and commit_sha in its body, since there is no CI token to supply them:

curl -s -X POST http://localhost:8090/api/v1/releases \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"release_id":"rel-core-v1","service":"core","image_tag":"v1","repo":"<owner>/<repo>","commit_sha":"<sha>"}'

With your own IdP, the token is an ID token it issues for the ui’s client id; how a script obtains one depends on the IdP. An operator token may also bootstrap a service ("bootstrap": true).

Service deployment controls

Each services entry requires name and enabled. Setting enabled: false omits that entry’s Deployment, Service, ServiceAccount, Role and RoleBinding. An enabled entry defaults to one replica when replicas is omitted; an explicit replicas: 0 keeps its resources and scales its Deployment to zero.

httpPort and grpcPort are independent optional Service ports. Either one creates a Service exposing only the configured ports. An entry with neither port still creates its Deployment and requested RBAC, without a Service.

Readiness and liveness probes follow the ports: an entry with httpPort is probed over HTTP on it (readinessPath, livenessPath, probePath), a gRPC-only entry by a TCP connect to its grpcPort, which works in the Go service images, and an entry with neither port by a Python process check, so its image must include Python.

Validating service controls

The standard bash scripts/install-test/lint.sh gate includes render regressions for enablement, replica counts, ports and RBAC. The optional live test uses the production service templates in an isolated Helm release, without starting the full continuo dependency stack. Its workload is a Go TCP echo on alpine without Python, as the shipped Go images are. It checks scale-to-zero, that a gRPC-only entry becomes ready, TCP routing through its Service, and resource removal on disable. It deletes its test namespace.

With Helm, kubectl and a disposable current cluster configured, build the fixture and make the image available to the cluster (for kind, load it with kind load docker-image continuo-chart-echo:test --name <cluster>), then run:

docker build -t continuo-chart-echo:test scripts/install-test/fixtures/service-controls
python3 scripts/install-test/test-service-controls-live.py continuo-chart-echo:test

Outbound traffic

agent-chat and agent-remediation are the two services where a language model decides what happens next, so they reach the outside world only through egress-proxy (egress.enabled, on by default). The proxy admits a connection only to a host and port on its allowlist, resolves the name itself, refuses loopback, unspecified, link-local and cloud-metadata addresses always and private addresses unless the entry allows them, and connects only to the addresses it checked. The chart sets HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY on both agents, and, with networkPolicy.enabled, their NetworkPolicy drops every other outbound connection.

The allowlist follows your settings. The chart builds it from:

See what it holds with kubectl -n <namespace> get configmap <release>-egress-proxy -o yaml (for a release named continuo, the ConfigMap is continuo-egress-proxy). The agents’ S3 client reaches the endpoint through the proxy, and signs its requests with the static keys the chart gives it (s3.accessKeyId and s3.secretKey, or s3.existingSecret; an external bucket requires them), so it makes no call to STS or the instance metadata service.

A model you host. Point the chart at its root URL:

llm:
  provider: openai-compatible
  baseUrl: http://gpu-box.internal:8000   # the root, without /v1
  model: llama-3.3-70b

A host name goes through the proxy and may resolve to a private address. An IP address (http://10.0.0.7:8000) is reached directly: the chart leaves it out of the allowlist, adds it to NO_PROXY and admits it, on its port, in the agents’ NetworkPolicy. Either way nothing else needs configuring, as long as the port is one the model’s pod listens on:

A NetworkPolicy sees a connection after a Service has translated it, as the pod’s address and port. So a port you configure must be one the pod listens on, whether the address is reached directly or through the proxy: a Service that maps port 80 to a pod port 8000 is not reachable on port 80, because the proxy reaches private addresses only on the port of the allowlist entry, and the agents only on the port of the direct destination. An IP address is for a machine or a pod, not for a Service.

A host must be a DNS name of letters, digits and inner hyphens, or an IP address. A llm.baseUrl, GITHUB_BASE_URL or s3.endpointUrl whose host is anything else (http://vllm_x:8000, with an underscore, for one) fails the render with a message that names the setting and the value; use a DNS-valid name or the IP address. The same holds for a port outside 1-65535.

Something else the agents reach. Add a host name to egress.allowedDomains (host or host:port, port 443 when omitted; *.example.com for every name below it), or to egress.privateDomains when it resolves to a private address.

An address that is not reached through the proxy goes in egress.directDestinations:

egress:
  directDestinations:
    - {cidr: 203.0.113.10/32, ports: [5432]}

Postgres and Redis speak their own protocols and ignore the proxy. With networkPolicy.enabled, an external Postgres or Redis on a private network, or running as a pod of any namespace, is already admitted on its configured port (externalDatabase.port, externalRedis.port), and one whose externalDatabase.host or externalRedis.host is a public IP address is added for you. One whose host is a name that resolves to a public address needs an entry: the chart cannot know where the name points, and helm upgrade prints the configured host as a reminder. Each entry is checked as written, and the render fails naming it unless:

• cidr is an IPv4 or IPv6 range with a prefix length of 1 or more and no address bit set past it. 0.0.0.0/0 and ::/0 are refused.
• the range overlaps none of loopback, link-local, the unspecified network, a cloud metadata address, IPv4-mapped IPv6 and a NAT64 address standing for one of those. A whole 100.64.0.0/10 and a whole fc00::/7 are refused because they contain metadata addresses (100.100.100.200, fd00:ec2::/32): list the narrower ranges you need.
• ports is a non-empty list of whole numbers from 1 to 65535. Write them without a leading zero: YAML reads an unquoted 0443 as the octal number 291, which the chart cannot tell from 291, so it opens port 291 and renders silently. A quoted "0443" is not a number and fails the render.

How the agents are kept to those rules. NO_PROXY lists, so that the agents reach them directly:

• localhost, 127.0.0.1 and ::1;
• the release’s own Services, in every form (name, name.<namespace>, name.<namespace>.svc, name.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local) and on every port;
• every other in-cluster address the agents are given (a global.*GrpcAddr, or a URL or host:port in their env) as host:port, when its host has no dot or ends in .svc or .svc.cluster.local, unless the allowlist admits that host and port, in which case the proxy carries it;
• every IP address the agents are given (the host of a URL, or of a URL or host:port in their env or a global.*GrpcAddr, which egress-proxy would refuse because it admits host names only), an external Postgres or Redis at a public IP address, and each egress.directDestinations range. A loopback address needs no entry, nor does a listen address (0.0.0.0) in their env; one in link-local or a cloud metadata range fails the render, naming the setting.

Every other address goes through the proxy. A <name>.<namespace> address in another namespace written without .svc, and a name with a trailing dot, are not treated as in-cluster: they go through the proxy, which refuses them unless the allowlist names them. Write <name>.<namespace>.svc.

With networkPolicy.enabled, the agents may reach:

• DNS (port 53);
• every pod of the release namespace on any port: the proxy, the services and the bundled datastores;
• an external Postgres or Redis on its configured port, on the private ranges and on pods of any namespace;
• every pod of another namespace on the port of each in-cluster address the agents are given there (foo.tools.svc:80 admits every pod of tools on port 80, not only the target pods);
• the egress.directDestinations ranges and every IP address they are given, including an external Postgres or Redis at a public IP address, on their ports.

egress-proxy itself may resolve names, reach public addresses on its allowlisted ports, and reach private addresses and pods of any namespace only on the ports of entries that allow private addresses. Only the two agents may connect to it, on its proxy port.

When there is no proxy. An install whose every destination is an IP address (a model, GitHub Enterprise and S3 at IP addresses, or the bundled MinIO) and that lists no egress.allowedDomains or egress.privateDomains has an empty allowlist, which the proxy refuses to start on. The chart then renders no egress-proxy object and sets no proxy variable; the agents reach those addresses directly, and their NetworkPolicy still limits them to the destinations above.

When a call is refused, egress-proxy logs a warning egress denied with the host, port, client address, method and reason, and counts it in continuo_egress_requests_total{decision="denied"}:

kubectl -n <namespace> logs -l app.kubernetes.io/name=egress-proxy --tail=-1 | grep "egress denied"

Your own egress controls. On Cilium or GKE Dataplane V2 you can write host-name rules natively. Set egress.enabled: false to run no proxy and manage the agents’ egress yourself: the chart then sets no proxy variable and renders no egress NetworkPolicy, so you may set HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY in the agents’ env.

What it does not stop.

• A CNI that does not enforce NetworkPolicy, or networkPolicy.enabled: false: the proxy variables only direct the agents’ own clients, and nothing stops a connection that skips the proxy. helm upgrade warns when networkPolicy.enabled is false.
• Name resolution: the agents may resolve any name, so a DNS query can carry data to a name server.
• An allowed host: the proxy sees host names and ports, not the encrypted traffic. It cannot stop a client that opens a tunnel to an allowed host and then reaches another site through a shared network behind it, nor a request to an allowed provider made with another account’s key.
• Everything inside the release namespace, and the namespaces and ports the lists above open.

Requirements at a glance

• Kubernetes >=1.27, Helm 3.14+.
• PostgreSQL only, today. The externalDatabase.* keys are deliberately engine-agnostic, but every migration and query assumes Postgres; MySQL is a roadmap item, not a supported option.
• In-cluster encryption is the operator’s: the chart configures no mTLS; run a service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) or CNI-level encryption if you need encrypted pod-to-pod traffic. External datastore connections use whatever transport you configure (externalDatabase.sslMode: require, TLS endpoints for S3, etc.).