Public Preview. Helps you identify what needs to be upgraded and prepare a reviewable upgrade plan for your IaC across 300+ Cloud Native Projects. Works with Cursor and Claude Code.To apply changes to your IaC and open a PR, use the companion Upgrade Agent.
What is Upgrade Planning?
Upgrade Planning combines multiple agents and tools to give engineers a structured and reliable way to prepare for upgrades. The process produces three artifacts:- Upgrade Assessments: High-level reports that map the scope, impact, and dependencies of upgrades. Assessments identify control plane, nodes, and Cloud Native Projects that require attention, flag deprecated APIs or breaking changes, and surface potential blockers across platform and application layers.
- Upgrade Plans: Environment-specific workflows that provide step-by-step instructions for safely upgrading Cloud Native Projects and application services. Plans include justifications from authoritative sources, explicit breaking-change notes, application-client impacts, and previews of IaC diffs.
- Upgrade Context: Minimal, environment-aware details that power execution by the Upgrade Agent. Context includes compatible target versions, environment-specific diffs, reviewer notes, security fixes, notable features, and application-client changes.
When to use Upgrade Planning
- You want a cluster-scoped inventory of Cloud Native Projects/application services that should be upgraded, with reasons.
- You need justification tied to compatibility, support windows, security advisories, and stability fixes.
- You want a reviewable plan and change preview for your IaC across 300+ Cloud Native Projects.
- You prefer to plan in your IDE (Cursor or Claude Code) before any repo changes.
- You intend to hand the outputs (Plans and Context) to the Upgrade Agent (or other automation) to open a PR.
What it does
- Analyzes the selected cluster to identify Projects and application services that require an upgrade.
- Evaluates each candidate against compatibility requirements, support timelines, security advisories, and notable bug fixes; explains the “why.”
- Produces structured, reviewable artifacts: Assessments, Plans, and Context.
- Optionally hands off to the Upgrade Agent to update charts/values while preserving customizations and open a focused PR.
Getting started
- Enable Chkk in your IDE. Follow the setup guides for Cursor or Claude Code.
- Open your IaC repo and ask your assistant, for example:
- “Check what needs upgrading in the cluster ‘prod-vas-01’.”
- Select a Cloud Native Project or application service from the results and ask:
- “Upgrade cert-manager.”
Examples
Ask: What needs to be updated and why?
| Name | Namespace(s) | Current | Suggested | Priority | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| cert-manager | cert-manager | 1.14.4 | 1.18.2 | Required | Incompatible with upcoming Kubernetes version; current version is end of life |
| CoreDNS | kube-system | 1.11.3 | 1.12.3 | Optional | Current version is outside maintainers’ support window |
| Kube Proxy | kube-system | 1.32.8 | - | Not needed | Compatible and supported |
Ask: Which version of a project should I upgrade to and why?
Why cert-manager must be upgraded
- Incompatible with Kubernetes 1.33 (supported: 1.17–1.18)
- v1.14 is End‑of‑Life (since Oct 2024)
Impact Preview: cert-manager 1.14.4 → 1.18.2
- Private key rotation now defaults to “always rotate” on renewal
- Revision history limit defaults to 1 (automatic cleanup)
- Ingress
PathTypechange:ImplementationSpecific→Exact - Structured logging (may break string-based log parsers)
- Venafi TPP: API Key removed; OAuth required
Ask: Which one should I upgrade first and why?
- cert-manager — Required now (Kubernetes 1.33 incompatibility; current version EOL)
- CoreDNS — Optional; outside maintainers’ support window
- Kube Proxy — No action; compatible and supported
Ask: Generate an Upgrade Plan for me
upgr_1d04e00a-4976-421b-b0c9-91ccb1215d48.
You can view the plan in Chkk UI under: Upgrade Copilot → Upgrade Plans → Add-ons & Application Services.
What you’ll review:
- Chkk Upgrade Plan for the selected Cloud Native Project or application service
- Important notes: breaking changes, compatibility, and notable fixes
Ask: Generate the Upgrade Context for the Upgrade Agent so it can open precise environment‑aware IaC pull requests
.chkk/scratchpad/downloads/.
What to do next
- Hand off to the Upgrade Agent to update Helm charts/values, preserve customizations, and open a focused PR