Kubernetes Deployment Workflows

Comprehensive deployment strategies using kubectl-mcp-server tools, including Argo Rollouts and Flagger for progressive delivery.

When to Apply

Use this skill when:

• User mentions: "deploy", "release", "rollout", "scale", "update", "upgrade"
• Operations: creating deployments, updating images, scaling replicas
• Strategies: canary, blue-green, rolling update, recreate
• Keywords: "new version", "push to production", "traffic shifting"

Priority Rules

Quick Reference

Standard Deployments

Deploy from Manifest

kubectl_apply(manifest_yaml, namespace)

Deploy with Helm

install_helm_chart(
    name="my-app",
    chart="bitnami/nginx",
    namespace="production",
    values={"replicaCount": 3}
)

Scale Deployment

scale_deployment(name, namespace, replicas=5)

Rolling Update

set_deployment_image(name, namespace, container="app", image="myapp:v2")

rollout_status(name, namespace, resource_type="deployment")

Progressive Delivery

Argo Rollouts (Recommended)

For canary and blue-green deployments with analysis.

List Rollouts

rollouts_list_tool(namespace)

Canary Promotion

rollout_status_tool(name, namespace)

rollout_promote_tool(name, namespace)

Abort Bad Release

rollout_abort_tool(name, namespace)

Retry Failed Rollout

rollout_retry_tool(name, namespace)

See [ROLLOUTS.md](ROLLOUTS.md) for detailed Argo Rollouts workflows.

Flagger Canary

For service mesh-integrated canary releases:

flagger_canaries_list_tool(namespace)
flagger_canary_get_tool(name, namespace)

Deployment Strategies

See [references/STRATEGIES.md](references/STRATEGIES.md) for detailed strategy comparisons.

Rollback Operations

Native Kubernetes

rollback_deployment(name, namespace, revision=0)

rollback_deployment(name, namespace, revision=2)

Helm Rollback

rollback_helm_release(name, namespace, revision=1)

Argo Rollouts Rollback

rollout_abort_tool(name, namespace)

Health Verification

After deployment, verify health:

get_pods(namespace, label_selector="app=myapp")

get_pod_metrics(name, namespace)

get_endpoints(namespace)

Multi-Cluster Deployments

Deploy to specific clusters using context:

install_helm_chart(
    name="app",
    chart="./charts/app",
    namespace="prod",
    context="production-us-east"
)

install_helm_chart(
    name="app",
    chart="./charts/app",
    namespace="prod",
    context="production-eu-west"
)

Example Manifests

See [examples/](examples/) for ready-to-use deployment manifests:

• [examples/canary-rollout.yaml](examples/canary-rollout.yaml) - Argo Rollouts canary
• [examples/blue-green.yaml](examples/blue-green.yaml) - Blue-green deployment
• [examples/hpa-deployment.yaml](examples/hpa-deployment.yaml) - Deployment with HPA

Prerequisites

• Argo Rollouts: Required for rollout_* tools

``bash kubectl create namespace argo-rollouts kubectl apply -n argo-rollouts -f https://github.com/argoproj/argo-rollouts/releases/latest/download/install.yaml ``

• Flagger: Required for flagger_* tools

``bash kubectl apply -k github.com/fluxcd/flagger/kustomize/kubernetes ``

Related Skills

• [k8s-gitops](../k8s-gitops/SKILL.md) - GitOps deployments with Flux/ArgoCD
• [k8s-autoscaling](../k8s-autoscaling/SKILL.md) - Auto-scale deployments
• [k8s-rollouts](../k8s-rollouts/SKILL.md) - Advanced progressive delivery
• [k8s-helm](../k8s-helm/SKILL.md) - Helm chart operations