keptn — Cloud-Native Lifecycle Orchestration
Logo © keptn authors, used under Apache-2.0 license
Screenshots © keptn authors, used under Apache-2.0 license — source: v1.keptn.sh
Overview
keptn is an event-based control plane for continuous delivery and automated operations for cloud-native applications. It automates SLO-driven multi-stage delivery pipelines and provides automated remediation triggered by monitoring data — all on top of Kubernetes, driven by CloudEvents.
The project was incubated by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and reached end-of-life on December 22, 2023, succeeded by the Keptn Lifecycle Toolkit.
My Role
I was the 4th top contributor in the keptn/keptn repository out of 115 total contributors, working under my GitHub handle @christian-kreuzberger-dtx. I was a member of the keptn GitHub organization and contributed across the core control plane, integrations, and surrounding tooling.
Notable personal repositories in the keptn ecosystem:
- keptn-selfmon-monaco — Monitoring-as-code for Keptn self-monitoring
- ck-keptn-qg — Keptn Quality Gate for Keptn itself
- keptn-job-executor-delivery-poc — POC using the job-executor for continuous delivery
- keptn-tempberry-example — Example integration
- keptn-import-example — Import workflow example
keptn-sandbox Contributions
I contributed to several repos in the keptn-sandbox organization, which hosts experimental integrations and tooling for the keptn ecosystem:
- keptn-sandbox/keptn-service-template-go — Maintained the canonical Go template for building keptn services; used by the community as the starting point for all new keptn integrations
- keptn-sandbox/action-install-keptn — GitHub Action for installing keptn in CI pipelines
- keptn-sandbox/keptn-jenkins-library — Jenkins shared library for keptn use cases
keptn-contrib Contributions
The keptn-contrib organization hosts stable, graduated integrations for the keptn ecosystem. My main contribution here was the dynatrace-service — the official keptn integration with Dynatrace, enabling SLO-based quality gates and automated remediation driven by Dynatrace monitoring data.
Tech Stack
- Languages: Go (55%), TypeScript (38%), Shell, Dockerfile
- Runtime: Kubernetes (Helm chart deployment)
- Protocol: CloudEvents (event-driven orchestration)
- Packaging: Helm (signed with cosign from v0.19.0)
- Registries: GitHub Container Registry (
ghcr.io/keptn), Quay.io - Integrations: Jenkins, GitHub, GitLab, Harness, ArgoCD, Flux
Scale
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| GitHub stars | 1,800+ |
| Forks | 235 |
| Contributors | 115 |
| Releases | 60 (v0.1.x → v1.4.5) |
| CNCF status | Incubating |
Timeline
- 2018 — Project started at Dynatrace
- ~2020 — Accepted into CNCF sandbox
- ~2022 — CNCF incubation; KubeCon Detroit announced Lifecycle Toolkit direction
- December 21, 2023 — Final release v1.4.5
- December 22, 2023 — End of life
Blog Posts
- What have I been doing the last 2 years? (June 2022) — covers my shift toward Kubernetes and Keptn, with video tutorials on setting up Keptn for continuous delivery