Prepare your cluster

kora installs onto a cluster that already runs Istio and SPIRE, with a PostgreSQL database and a Redis instance it can reach. SPIRE issues each workload its identity, and Istio carries traffic between workloads over mutual TLS.

Kubernetes cluster

kora supports Kubernetes 1.34 and later. Installing needs cluster-admin to create the CRDs, cluster roles, admission webhooks and other cluster-scoped resources.

The CNI must enforce NetworkPolicy. The kora chart installs a default-deny policy in kora-system with rules for the traffic kora needs. Set networkPolicy.enabled: false only on a CNI that cannot enforce it.

Pod Security Admission must admit the privileged SPIRE and Istio node components. kora's own namespaces run at the restricted level.

Trust domain

Istio, SPIRE and kora must use the same trust domain. Every workload's SPIFFE ID starts with it, such as spiffe://example.com/tenant/kora-tenant-engineering/agent/coder. Choose it before you install. Changing it later means migrating every workload identity.

Set it in all three places:

Component	Setting
Istio	meshConfig.trustDomain on istiod
SPIRE	global.spire.trustDomain in the spire chart
kora	global.trustDomain in the kora chart

Istio

kora supports Istio 1.30 and 1.31 in sidecar mode. On any other minor version, the operator's preflight fails and every tenant stays Degraded. To accept another minor version, add it to operator.preflight.supportedIstioMinors. kora has not verified sidecar injection outside of the listed minors.

Install Istio with the Istio install guide and the values in the quickstart's istiod.yaml. kora's namespaces reject Istio's default istio-init container. Install the Istio CNI plugin and run istiod with pilot.cni.enabled: true.

Set these in kora's values when your mesh differs from the defaults:

• istio.namespace: where istiod and the istio-cni-node DaemonSet run, istio-system by default.
• istio.revision: the Istio revision kora's namespaces use. With a revision, label kora-system with istio.io/rev=<revision> in place of istio-injection=enabled.
• istio.outboundTrafficPolicy: REGISTRY_ONLY: for a mesh that blocks unregistered hosts. The chart then registers an external Postgres or Redis host, and the operator registers model providers and external MCP servers. Register the OIDC issuer and other external hosts yourself.

SPIRE

kora registers its workload identities through spire-controller-manager.

To install SPIRE, use the spiffe/spire chart with the quickstart's spire.yaml values.

If you already run SPIRE:

• Run a SPIRE agent and the SPIFFE CSI driver on every node that runs kora, agent or sandbox pods, tainted nodes included.
• Set kora's spire.className to your spire-controller-manager's class name. It defaults to spire-system-spire.
• Set fallback: true on any ClusterSPIFFEID that matches kora's pods, or exclude kora's namespaces from it.

Database and cache

kora supports PostgreSQL 14 and later and Redis 6.2 and later. Both must be reachable from kora-system. kora does not provision, back up, patch or replicate either service.

The database role in config.db.user needs CREATE on schema public. The kora-migrate Job connects without an Istio sidecar. A database that accepts only mesh mTLS rejects it.

Workspace storage

Each agent runtime pod gets a 10Gi ReadWriteOnce workspace volume from the default StorageClass. Set agents.workspace.storageClassName, accessModes and size to change it. A change applies only to agents created afterwards.

Sandboxes on a separate node pool need a ReadWriteMany StorageClass, such as EFS, Filestore or an NFS server.

DNS and TLS

Choose a hostname for the dashboard, such as example.com, and set it as frontendHost. kora serves its APIs on api.example.com.

Point both names at the Istio gateway. Its Service is a LoadBalancer unless you set ingressGateway.service.type to NodePort or ClusterIP. The gateway certificate must be valid for both names. cert-manager or another issuer can provide it.

Registry

The charts and kora images are public on ghcr.io, and the gateway's OPA image is on docker.io. None needs a registry login.

To pull from your own registry, create a kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson Secret in kora-system. The operator copies it into each tenant namespace.

yaml

global:
  imageRegistry: registry.example.com/kora
  imagePullSecrets:
    - name: registry-credentials
opaGateway:
  image:
    registry: registry.example.com