Warning
kuik v3 is in a very early stage of development: it is not stable nor feature complete yet. See Status for what works today. If you are looking for the latest stable version, it is maintained on the 2.3.x branch: see its releases and its documentation on kuik.enix.io.
kuik (pronounced /kwɪk/, like "quick") is the shortname of kube-image-keeper.
✅ Its primary objective is to maximize the availability of Pod images strictly within the Kubernetes cluster it runs on.
✅ Its secondary goal is to ensure bulletproof reliability by keeping the manipulation of Kubernetes primitives to an absolute minimum.
It relies on three core mechanisms:
- Image routing: rewrites Pod image paths on the fly during their creation to redirect them to a functional registry.
- Image copy: mirror images used by the local cluster across registries, building a virtual, highly available registry.
- Image monitoring: continuously tracks the availability of Pod images used within the local cluster across various registries.
Note
Image routing is performed at Pod creation by a lightweight MutatingWebhook that automatically rewrites the image path whenever the source registry becomes unavailable.
This branch holds kuik v3, a rewrite currently in development and released as alphas. Two milestones lie ahead:
- v3.0 beta, due 2026-11-01: every feature is implemented, not yet stable.
- v3.0 GA: stable, ready for production.
| Feature | Status |
|---|---|
Image routing (ImageAlternative, mutating webhook) |
Available since 3.0.0-alpha.2 |
| Pull secret injection (secret syncer) | Available since 3.0.0-alpha.3 |
Image copy (ImageMirror) |
Merged on main (#710), ships with 3.0.0-alpha.4 |
Image monitoring (ImageMonitor) |
In progress, for the beta |
| Admission validation | Planned for the beta |
Credentials from a cloud provider (auth.provider) |
Not planned yet |
| Plain-HTTP registries and private CAs | Not planned yet |
| Migration from v2 | None: a migration plan will be proposed once GA is out |
- Stable version: v2.3, documented on kuik.enix.io. It is in maintenance: bug fixes only.
- v3 specification:
docs/v3/, starting withspec.md. It is the source of truth for v3 behaviour, frozen for now, it may evolves after we reach beta. - Custom resources:
ImageAlternative(routing),ImageMirror(copy) andImageMonitor(monitoring), described in the CRD reference.
Development process and decisions are recorded in notes/. Contributions follow CONTRIBUTING.md.
kube-image-keeper is developed by Enix and released under the MIT License.