Getting Started

Set up Ankra end to end: try the live playground, import or provision a Kubernetes cluster, build and deploy a stack, wire up GitOps and CI/CD, then operate it with AI - from the web UI, the ankra CLI, an MCP-connected agent, or your pipelines.

This guide walks you through setting up Ankra: trying it in the playground, connecting a cluster, building your stack, and using AI to manage your infrastructure. GitOps is optional - stacks deploy directly through the Ankra agent, and you can add a Git audit trail whenever you want it.

This guide uses the web UI; every step also works from the CLI, an MCP-connected agent, or your CI/CD pipelines - step 5 wires those up.

What you need: a Kubernetes cluster you can run helm against (EKS, GKE, AKS, k3s, minikube - anything), or nothing at all if you start in the playground.

---

0. Try the Playground (optional)

No cluster handy? Start in the playground: a real, writable, ephemeral Kubernetes environment we provision for you in about two minutes. It comes with a starter stack already deploying, so you can watch a real deploy land, then use the AI to ship something yourself.

1. Start the playground

   On your first visit, choose Try it in a live playground. You can also start one later from Clusters → Try Playground.

2. Deploy something

   Everything works: deploy stacks, browse resources, break things, ask the AI to fix them. The playground is yours alone.

3. Graduate to your own cluster

   The playground expires after a few days (you’ll get a heads-up). Everything you learned works identically on your own cluster - importing one takes a single helm command.

---

1. Connect a Cluster

Everything starts with a cluster. Import an existing one or provision a new managed cluster.

Import Existing Cluster

Import any Kubernetes cluster - EKS, GKE, AKS, on-prem, k3s, minikube, or kind.

1. Create the cluster in Ankra

   Go to Clusters and click Import Cluster. Give it a name.

2. Install the Ankra agent

   Ankra generates a Helm command for your cluster. Run it wherever you have kubectl access:

   helm upgrade --install ankra-agent oci://ghcr.io/ankraio/ankra-agent/ankra-agent \
     --namespace ankra \
     --create-namespace \
     --set config.token="YOUR_UNIQUE_TOKEN"
   

   The agent connects your cluster to the platform securely. It works behind firewalls, NATs, and private networks.

3. Verify the connection

   Your cluster appears in the dashboard within seconds. You now have full visibility into workloads, resources, and events.

Provision a Managed Cluster

Ankra provisions production-ready Kubernetes clusters (kubeadm with Cilium by default, or K3s) on Hetzner, OVHCloud, or UpCloud with automated networking, bastion hosts, and NAT gateways.

1. Add cloud credentials

   Go to Credentials and add your cloud provider API key (Hetzner, OVH, or UpCloud). Don’t have a Hetzner account? Sign up for Hetzner Cloud to get started.

2. Create a cluster

   Go to Clusters → Create Cluster. Select your provider and configure:

   • Region - choose a datacenter location
   • Node sizing - control plane and worker node types
   • Networking - private network range and subnet
   • Distribution and version - kubeadm with Cilium is preselected (K3s is one click away); pick a supported Kubernetes version
3. Wait for provisioning

   Ankra provisions the infrastructure, installs Kubernetes, configures networking, and connects the agent. The cluster is fully yours - if you disconnect from Ankra, everything keeps running on your cloud account.

You can also provision clusters from the CLI: ankra cluster hetzner create, ankra cluster ovh create.

---

2. Build Your Stack

A Stack is a collection of Helm charts, manifests, and variables that define your Kubernetes environment. Build stacks visually or with AI assistance.

1. Open the Stack Builder

   Navigate to your cluster → Stacks → Create Stack. The visual canvas opens.

2. Add components

   Click + Add to compose your stack:

   • Add-ons - Helm charts like Prometheus, Grafana, NGINX Ingress, cert-manager
   • Manifests - custom Kubernetes YAML (namespaces, RBAC, ConfigMaps, CRDs)

   Drag components onto the canvas and connect them to define deployment order.

3. Or, use the AI Assistant

   Press ⌘+J and describe what you need:

   “I need a monitoring stack with Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki for a production cluster with 30-day retention”

   The AI recommends components, configurations, dependencies, and deployment order tailored to your cluster.

4. Configure and deploy

   Click any component to edit its values. Use variables with ${{ ankra.variable_name }} for environment-specific configuration. Click Create Stack to save and deploy.

   Deploys go directly through the Ankra agent - no Git repository or extra credentials required.

Stacks can be cloned across clusters - replicate a stack from dev to staging to production. See Clone a Stack.

---

3. Connect GitOps (optional)

Stacks deploy without Git. Connect a GitHub repository when you want version control, an audit trail, and CI/CD integration on top - every stack write is then also committed to your repository. This is where Ankra integrates with your existing CI/CD.

1. Connect your repository

   Go to your cluster → Settings → Integration. Select a GitHub credential (or add one) and choose the repository where Ankra will store your cluster configuration.

   Ankra installs ArgoCD and the GitOps engine on your cluster automatically.

2. Your stacks are now in Git

   Every stack you build is exported as Helm values and manifests to your repository under clusters/{cluster-name}/. Changes in either direction sync automatically.

3. Wire up your CI/CD pipeline

   Your existing CI pipeline can now deploy through Ankra:

   1. CI builds a container image and pushes to your registry
   2. CI commits the new image tag to the GitOps repo
   3. Ankra detects the change and deploys to your cluster

   See the full walkthroughs for GitHub Actions or GitLab CI. For app repos, Applications (closed beta) generates the Dockerfile, Helm chart, and pipeline for you.

4. Monitor sync status

   Go to your cluster → Settings → GitOps to view sync status, history, and any errors. Every sync is tracked with commit SHA, trigger source, and timestamp.

GitOps file format

For advanced setups, define your clusters declaratively using include paths to keep configuration modular:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ImportCluster
metadata:
  name: my-cluster
spec:
  git_repository:
    provider: github
    credential_name: my-credential
    branch: main
    repository: my-org/infra-gitops
  stacks:
    - name: platform-stack
      manifests:
        - include: manifests/
      addons:
        - include: addons/

Different teams can own different YAML files in the same repo - no merge conflicts, no monolithic configs. The full schema is in the ImportCluster YAML reference.

---

4. Manage with AI

With your cluster connected and stacks deployed, Ankra’s AI capabilities unlock powerful management and debugging workflows.

Ask the AI anything

Press ⌘+J from anywhere in the platform. The AI is page-aware - it automatically knows what you’re looking at. Three modes control how much it can do: Ask answers read-only, Agentic confirms each change before acting, and Plan lets you approve a plan once and watch it execute.

You’re viewing	What the AI already knows
A crashing pod	Its logs, events, manifest, resource usage, and parent deployment
A deployment	All replicas, rollout status, associated services, and recent changes
A stack	Installed add-ons, Helm values, deployment history, and dependencies

Try these:

• “Why is my pod crashing?”
• “Scale this deployment to 5 replicas”
• “What changed in the last hour that could cause 503 errors?”
• “Create a Redis stack with persistence enabled”

Enable proactive AI Insights

Navigate to Organisation Settings → General → toggle Proactive AI Insights. The AI continuously scans your clusters and surfaces issues with root cause analysis, remediation commands, and MTTR analytics before they become incidents.

Set up alerts with AI analysis

Configure alert rules on your cluster. When alerts trigger, Ankra’s AI automatically collects cluster data and generates structured incident reports with root cause, affected resources, and recommended actions.

---

5. Take Ankra to Your Tools

The same tool registry behind ⌘+J is available outside the browser - to your terminal, your editor’s AI agent, and your pipelines. No browser automation required.

CLI

Install, sign in, and hand tasks to the AI from your terminal:

bash <(curl -sL https://github.com/ankraio/ankra-cli/releases/latest/download/install.sh)
ankra login
ankra chat "why is the payments pod crashing?" --cluster prod
ankra chat "scale the api deployment to 5 replicas" --cluster prod --mode agent

--mode ask stays read-only (plus safe creations); --mode agent lets it act. For headless or CI use, set the ANKRA_API_TOKEN environment variable instead of ankra login. See the Ankra CLI guide.

MCP (Claude, Cursor)

Point any MCP client at Ankra’s remote server and it gets the full tool surface (clusters, workloads, logs, stacks, provisioning) gated by mcp:read / mcp:write scopes.

# Claude Code - register once, then authenticate with /mcp
claude mcp add --transport http ankra https://platform.ankra.app/api/v1/mcp

Then install Ankra’s curated Agent Skills into your editor - ankra skills install for Cursor (default) or ankra skills install --editor claude-code for Claude Code.

See the MCP Server guide for Claude desktop/web, Cursor, tokens, and OAuth, and the MCP Tool Reference for every tool.

CI/CD

Your pipelines deploy through the GitOps image-bump flow from step 3. Beyond deploys, any plain CI job becomes a pipeline agent by calling the CLI:

- run: bash <(curl -sL https://github.com/ankraio/ankra-cli/releases/latest/download/install.sh)
- env:
    ANKRA_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ANKRA_API_TOKEN }}
  run: ankra chat --cluster prod -o json "Review this repo's cluster YAML against the live cluster"

See Pipeline Agents for PR review, deploy watching, and scheduled health checks, the GitHub Actions and GitLab CI pipeline guides, or the Terraform provider for infrastructure-as-code.

---

What’s Next

Build a Monitoring Stack

Deploy Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki with AI assistance.

Pipeline Agents

PR review, deploy watching, and scheduled health checks from plain CI jobs.

MCP Server

Connect Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients with scoped access to 169 platform tools.

AI Assistant

Deep dive into AI-powered troubleshooting, stack building, and incident triangulation.

Variables & Secrets

Parameterise your stacks with organisation, cluster, and stack-level variables.

Hermes

Run Ankra’s autonomous infrastructure agent from Slack, Discord, or Telegram.

---

Still have questions? Join our Slack community and we’ll help out.