helm: Allow configuring agent runtime#1697

marcofranssen · 2026-04-19T09:42:40Z

This PR allows to configure the agent runtime as Go. In the agent.yaml templates I kept the default as python.

In the kagent chart I set the runtime by default to Go. It needs much less memory and CPU which also allows better use on local kind clusters which are more resource constrainted.

This way people can more easily run and try kagent on their local system. The resources are still overprovisioned to leave some room for more heavy use. Real production use can still override the values to higher numbers.

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Pull request overview

This PR aims to make Helm-installed agents configurable to run with the Go runtime (while keeping python as the per-agent default), and adjusts default resource requests/limits to better fit local/kind clusters.

Changes:

Added spec.runtime to multiple agent agent.yaml templates (defaulting to "python").
Introduced a new runtime-related value in agent chart values.yaml files.
Reduced default resource requests/limits in the helm/kagent parent chart and set agent runtime defaults to go there.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 21 out of 21 changed files in this pull request and generated 12 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
helm/kagent/values.yaml	Sets agent runtimes to `go` and reduces resources for agents and kagent-tools.
helm/agents/promql/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the promql agent chart values.
helm/agents/promql/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/observability/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the observability agent chart values.
helm/agents/observability/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/kgateway/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the kgateway agent chart values.
helm/agents/kgateway/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/k8s/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the k8s agent chart values.
helm/agents/k8s/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/istio/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the istio agent chart values.
helm/agents/istio/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/helm/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the helm agent chart values.
helm/agents/helm/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/cilium-policy/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the cilium-policy agent chart values.
helm/agents/cilium-policy/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/cilium-manager/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the cilium-manager agent chart values.
helm/agents/cilium-manager/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/cilium-debug/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the cilium-debug agent chart values.
helm/agents/cilium-debug/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).
helm/agents/argo-rollouts/values.yaml	Adds a runtime-related value/comment to the argo-rollouts agent chart values.
helm/agents/argo-rollouts/templates/agent.yaml	Adds `spec.runtime` templating (defaults to python).

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EItanya

I like the addition of runtime to the agent charts, but the changes to the parent chart are mostly breaking so I don't think we can make those

EItanya · 2026-04-20T21:01:55Z

    version: ${VERSION}
    repository: file://../tools/grafana-mcp
-    condition: tools.grafana-mcp.enabled, agents.observability-agent.enabled
+    condition: grafana-mcp.enabled, observability-agent.enabled


Why did this get updated? IIRC this happened before and was incorrect

Because otherwise you can't pass in the values for the sub charts.

If you keep the values aligned with the names of the subcharts, those values can be passed to the subcharts, so users can override e.g. resources etc.

Also see the values.yaml basically all values under

grafana-mcp (the name of the dependency) will propagate to the nested charts.

FYI. Would be great if this sort of change could at least be highlighted in the release notes since this is ultimately a breaking change. I certainly didn't expect that my current Helm values setup would need to be rewritten in a patch release that doesn't even mention changes to Helm values - "Allow configuring agent runtime" doesn't really highlight this 😄

Because otherwise you can't pass in the values for the sub charts.

To this point... This is incorrect - yes you can still pass values through to the sub-chart. The defaults here (e.g. resources) were not being passed through. But there was nothing stopping anyone from configuring their own values.yaml correctly with something like

sub-chart: runtime: "go"

Also, FYI, the side-effect of moving enabled under sub-chart: is that now, that key/value pair enabled: true will always be passed through to the sub-chart as well.

EItanya · 2026-04-20T21:02:25Z

-      limits:
-        cpu: 1000m
-        memory: 1Gi
+k8s-agent:


This is a breaking change

It is a mandatory change as otherwise the values will not propagate to the subcharts. The current value structure is broken.

If we want to be able to override values of the subcharts we need name the values at the root.

Also see the Chart.yaml.

Values will only propagate to the nested/dependency charts if the keys in the yaml here match the name/alias of a chart dependency.

So if we have a dependency -name: k8s-agent then the value structure here must be k8s-agent: in order for the values to propagate. agents.k8s-agent will not propagate. This is simply how Helm works.

Tested on main, and subchart values are currently broken and not propagated properly when they are set here so these changes make sense to me

marcofranssen · 2026-04-20T21:34:32Z

Thanks for the questions in the review. I see the helm chart isn't following helm practices and has quite a lot more flaws in the design. Without changing value structure, none of the values would propagate to the subcharts.

E.g. I'm even thinking to drop the subcharts approach and make all part of the same chart. Then we don't have to change the value structure. We would end up with a single helm chart. Using Helm templates to loop over the agents.

I can also implement it that way. Simplifying the helm chart. Making the things more idiomatic etc.

Let me know. I'm planning to contribute more and to address a whole bunch of gaps. So we can do a couple more production grade configurations. Also would love to improve the Kagent cli to make it more useable, similar like the cilium cli e.g.

EItanya · 2026-04-21T16:45:34Z

This PR is looking great, the only thing I'll say is that I don't think we should change the default runtime yet. We're planning to do that in 0.10.0

jmhbh

Tested this locally, works great!

jmhbh · 2026-04-21T18:16:26Z

-      limits:
-        cpu: 1000m
-        memory: 1Gi
+k8s-agent:


Tested on main, and subchart values are currently broken and not propagated properly when they are set here so these changes make sense to me

marcofranssen · 2026-04-21T20:31:15Z

@EItanya tell me what to change, or make suggestions. Too prevent more back and forth... Would love to get this in so my deployment start working and I can contribute in the next improvements.

EItanya · 2026-04-22T12:00:45Z

@EItanya tell me what to change, or make suggestions. Too prevent more back and forth... Would love to get this in so my deployment start working and I can contribute in the next improvements.

For example, you set the runtime to all agents in the values.yaml to go. We are planning on doing that in the next minor release, can you either unset those or set them to python for now

cilium-debug-agent:
  enabled: true
  runtime: go

Signed-off-by: Marco Franssen <marco.franssen@gmail.com>

in 0.10 the swap to go is planned Co-authored-by: Marco Franssen <marco.franssen@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Marco Franssen <marco.franssen@gmail.com>

marcofranssen · 2026-04-22T20:19:08Z

All feedback handled @EItanya, removed the runtime override for now.

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings April 19, 2026 09:42

marcofranssen requested review from EItanya, ilackarms and yuval-k as code owners April 19, 2026 09:42

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of marcofranssen April 19, 2026 09:43 View session

marcofranssen force-pushed the helm-agent-runtime-config branch 2 times, most recently from 2020cb9 to 734c8a7 Compare April 19, 2026 09:45

marcofranssen commented Apr 19, 2026

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Comment thread helm/agents/cilium-policy/values.yaml Outdated

Copilot AI reviewed Apr 19, 2026

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marcofranssen commented Apr 19, 2026

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Comment thread helm/kagent/values.yaml

EItanya requested changes Apr 20, 2026

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jmhbh reviewed Apr 20, 2026

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Comment thread helm/agents/istio/templates/agent.yaml Outdated

marcofranssen force-pushed the helm-agent-runtime-config branch 4 times, most recently from 0cb4c5b to 8454497 Compare April 21, 2026 08:18

marcofranssen requested a review from EItanya April 21, 2026 11:23

jmhbh reviewed Apr 21, 2026

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jmhbh previously approved these changes Apr 21, 2026

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marcofranssen commented Apr 22, 2026

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marcofranssen dismissed jmhbh’s stale review via af953ce April 22, 2026 20:17

marcofranssen added 4 commits April 22, 2026 22:18

helm: Allow configuring agent runtime

7d0d27a

Signed-off-by: Marco Franssen <marco.franssen@gmail.com>

helm: Fix passing values to dependency charts

b214517

Signed-off-by: Marco Franssen <marco.franssen@gmail.com>

Fix runtime > declarative.runtime

8c762bf

Signed-off-by: Marco Franssen <marco.franssen@gmail.com>

Keep python runtime for this release

c8e116d

in 0.10 the swap to go is planned Co-authored-by: Marco Franssen <marco.franssen@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Marco Franssen <marco.franssen@gmail.com>

marcofranssen force-pushed the helm-agent-runtime-config branch from af953ce to c8e116d Compare April 22, 2026 20:18

Merge branch 'main' into helm-agent-runtime-config

0d12b7e

jmhbh approved these changes Apr 23, 2026

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EItanya approved these changes Apr 23, 2026

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EItanya merged commit 0a94d1a into kagent-dev:main Apr 23, 2026
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BrewTestBot mentioned this pull request May 1, 2026

kagent 0.9.1 Homebrew/homebrew-core#280435

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