minikube_skill

Overview

This skill manages local Kubernetes clusters using Minikube to support development and testing workflows. It provides commands and guidance for starting clusters, configuring resources and drivers, enabling essential addons, networking access, and using local container images. Use it to run Phase IV local deployments that mirror cloud setups before pushing to production.

How this skill works

The skill automates common Minikube tasks: starting and deleting clusters, configuring defaults (memory, CPUs, driver), and managing named profiles. It covers addon management (ingress, metrics, storage, registry), networking options (NodePort, tunnel, port-forward), and workflows for building or loading local Docker images into the Minikube node. It also includes debugging commands and guidance for resolving resource and driver issues.

When to use it

• Setting up a single-node local Kubernetes environment for development or testing
• Validating applications and Helm charts locally before cloud deployment (Phase IV)
• Testing ingress, LoadBalancer behavior and service access without cloud resources
• Building and iterating on container images directly inside the Minikube Docker environment
• Running lightweight CI tasks that require a Kubernetes API without provisioning cloud clusters

Best practices

• Allocate sufficient resources at start (example: --memory=8192 --cpus=4) to avoid evictions and slow builds
• Use named profiles for parallel or versioned local clusters (minikube start -p <name>)
• Enable only required addons (ingress, metrics-server, storage-provisioner, registry) to reduce resource usage
• Build images inside Minikube with eval $(minikube docker-env) or use minikube image load for fast iterations
• Use minikube tunnel for LoadBalancer services and /etc/hosts entries for stable ingress hostnames

Example use cases

• Local TaskFlow deployment: start cluster, enable ingress and metrics, build images, deploy with Helm, run minikube tunnel
• Developing web frontends: port-forward or minikube service to expose services to localhost
• Testing ingress rules and TLS locally by mapping minikube IP to taskflow.local in /etc/hosts
• Running performance or resource validation for microservices with kubectl top after enabling metrics-server
• Debugging cluster or addon issues using minikube logs and component-specific kubectl logs