Building kukie-oven, a Go operator that turns one ServedModel into a PVC, a download Job and a vLLM Deployment — the reconcile order, two server-side-apply field managers, telling someone else’s object from a leftover, Helm and GHCR packaging, an EBS CSI role limited by a tag boundary, and the first real run on an L40S: Ready in 14 minutes 11 seconds with no manual step.
Why an external LLM API plan became a Helm add-on for users’ GPU clusters — quality and cost numbers behind the pivot, three layers split by required permissions, a chart with per-layer switches and a preflight job, the measurement-to-429 loop, an honest comparison with KubeAI and LiteLLM, and what is built versus still planned.
Running customer Helm charts in a dedicated pod — why it left the shared agent, what helm reads from a chart, process limits, matching Argo CD’s render conditions, and a NetworkPolicy controller that had been off all along.
Finding which values key controls a rendered field in 21 public Helm charts — judging keys by marker rendering, narrowing candidates, why 18 of 209 fields were missed, comparing code with an LLM on five charts, and what a single render costs.