The Agentic Rancher Experiment: Do Androids Dream of Electric Cattle? by moio

Rancher is a beast of a codebase. Let's investigate if the new 2025 generation of GitHub Autonomous Coding Agents and Copilot Workspaces can actually tame it.

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The Plan

Create a sandbox GitHub Organization, clone in key Rancher repositories, and let the AI loose to see if it can handle real-world enterprise OSS maintenance - or if it just hallucinates new breeds of Kubernetes resources!

Specifically, throw "Agentic Coders" some typical tasks in a complex, long-lived open-source project, such as:

❥ The Grunt Work: generate missing GoDocs, unit tests, and refactorings. Rebase PRs.

❥ The Complex Stuff: fix actual (historical) bugs and feature requests to see if they can traverse the complexity without (too much) human hand-holding.

❥ Hunting Down Gaps: find areas lacking in docs, areas of improvement in code, dependency bumps, and so on.

If time allows, also experiment with Model Context Protocol (MCP) to give agents context on our specific build pipelines and CI/CD logs.

Why?

We know AI can write "Hello World." and also moderately complex programs from a green field. But can it rebase a 3-month-old PR with conflicts in rancher/rancher? I want to find the breaking point of current AI agents to determine if and how they can help us to reduce our technical debt, work faster and better. At the same time, find out about pitfalls and shortcomings.

The CONCLUSION!!!

A State of the Union document was compiled to summarize lessons learned this week. For more gory details, just read on the diary below!

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AI-Powered Unit Test Automation for Agama by joseivanlopez

The Agama project is a multi-language Linux installer that leverages the distinct strengths of several key technologies:

• Rust: Used for the back-end services and the core HTTP API, providing performance and safety.
• TypeScript (React/PatternFly): Powers the modern web user interface (UI), ensuring a consistent and responsive user experience.
• Ruby: Integrates existing, robust YaST libraries (e.g., yast-storage-ng) to reuse established functionality.

The Problem: Testing Overhead

Developing and maintaining code across these three languages requires a significant, tedious effort in writing, reviewing, and updating unit tests for each component. This high cost of testing is a drain on developer resources and can slow down the project's evolution.

The Solution: AI-Driven Automation

This project aims to eliminate the manual overhead of unit testing by exploring and integrating AI-driven code generation tools. We will investigate how AI can:

1. Automatically generate new unit tests as code is developed.
2. Intelligently correct and update existing unit tests when the application code changes.

By automating this crucial but monotonous task, we can free developers to focus on feature implementation and significantly improve the speed and maintainability of the Agama codebase.

Goals

• Proof of Concept: Successfully integrate and demonstrate an authorized AI tool (e.g., gemini-cli) to automatically generate unit tests.
• Workflow Integration: Define and document a new unit test automation workflow that seamlessly integrates the selected AI tool into the existing Agama development pipeline.
• Knowledge Sharing: Establish a set of best practices for using AI in code generation, sharing the learned expertise with the broader team.

Contribution & Resources

We are seeking contributors interested in AI-powered development and improving developer efficiency. Whether you have previous experience with code generation tools or are eager to learn, your participation is highly valuable.

If you want to dive deep into AI for software quality, please reach out and join the effort!

• Authorized AI Tools: Tools supported by SUSE (e.g., gemini-cli)
• Focus Areas: Rust, TypeScript, and Ruby components within the Agama project.

Interesting Links

• goose

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Backporting patches using LLM by jankara

Description

Backporting Linux kernel fixes (either for CVE issues or as part of general git-fixes workflow) is boring and mostly mechanical work (dealing with changes in context, renamed variables, new helper functions etc.). The idea of this project is to explore usage of LLM for backporting Linux kernel commits to SUSE kernels using LLM.

Goals

• Create safe environment allowing LLM to run and backport patches without exposing the whole filesystem to it (for privacy and security reasons).
• Write prompt that will guide LLM through the backporting process. Fine tune it based on experimental results.
• Explore success rate of LLMs when backporting various patches.

Resources

• Docker
• Gemini CLI

Repository

Current version of the container with some instructions for use are at: https://gitlab.suse.de/jankara/gemini-cli-backporter

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Kubernetes-Based ML Lifecycle Automation by lmiranda

Description

This project aims to build a complete end-to-end Machine Learning pipeline running entirely on Kubernetes, using Go, and containerized ML components.

The pipeline will automate the lifecycle of a machine learning model, including:

• Data ingestion/collection
• Model training as a Kubernetes Job
• Model artifact storage in an S3-compatible registry (e.g. Minio)
• A Go-based deployment controller that automatically deploys new model versions to Kubernetes using Rancher
• A lightweight inference service that loads and serves the latest model
• Monitoring of model performance and service health through Prometheus/Grafana

The outcome is a working prototype of an MLOps workflow that demonstrates how AI workloads can be trained, versioned, deployed, and monitored using the Kubernetes ecosystem.

Goals

By the end of Hack Week, the project should:

1. Produce a fully functional ML pipeline running on Kubernetes with:

   • Data collection job
   • Training job container
   • Storage and versioning of trained models
   • Automated deployment of new model versions
   • Model inference API service
   • Basic monitoring dashboards

2. Showcase a Go-based deployment automation component, which scans the model registry and automatically generates & applies Kubernetes manifests for new model versions.

3. Enable continuous improvement by making the system modular and extensible (e.g., additional models, metrics, autoscaling, or drift detection can be added later).

4. Prepare a short demo explaining the end-to-end process and how new models flow through the system.

Resources

Project Repository

Updates

1. Training pipeline and datasets
2. Inference Service py

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Is SUSE Trending? Popularity and Developer Sentiment Insight Using Native AI Capabilities by terezacerna

Description

This project aims to explore the popularity and developer sentiment around SUSE and its technologies compared to Red Hat and their technologies. Using publicly available data sources, I will analyze search trends, developer preferences, repository activity, and media presence. The final outcome will be an interactive Power BI dashboard that provides insights into how SUSE is perceived and discussed across the web and among developers.

Goals

1. Assess the popularity of SUSE products and brand compared to Red Hat using Google Trends.
2. Analyze developer satisfaction and usage trends from the Stack Overflow Developer Survey.
3. Use the GitHub API to compare SUSE and Red Hat repositories in terms of stars, forks, contributors, and issue activity.
4. Perform sentiment analysis on GitHub issue comments to measure community tone and engagement using built-in Copilot capabilities.
5. Perform sentiment analysis on Reddit comments related to SUSE technologies using built-in Copilot capabilities.
6. Use Gnews.io to track and compare the volume of news articles mentioning SUSE and Red Hat technologies.
7. Test the integration of Copilot (AI) within Power BI for enhanced data analysis and visualization.
8. Deliver a comprehensive Power BI report summarizing findings and insights.
9. Test the full potential of Power BI, including its AI features and native language Q&A.

Resources

1. Google Trends: Web scraping for search popularity data
2. Stack Overflow Developer Survey: For technology popularity and satisfaction comparison
3. GitHub API: For repository data (stars, forks, contributors, issues, comments).
4. Gnews.io API: For article volume and mentions analysis.
5. Reddit: SUSE related topics with comments.

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GenAI-Powered Systemic Bug Evaluation and Management Assistant by rtsvetkov

Motivation

What is the decision critical question which one can ask on a bug? How this question affects the decision on a bug and why?

Let's make GenAI look on the bug from the systemic point and evaluate what we don't know. Which piece of information is missing to take a decision?

Description

To build a tool that takes a raw bug report (including error messages and context) and uses a large language model (LLM) to generate a series of structured, Socratic-style or Systemic questions designed to guide a the integration and development toward the root cause, rather than just providing a direct, potentially incorrect fix.

Goals

Set up a Python environment

Set the environment and get a Gemini API key. 2. Collect 5-10 realistic bug reports (from open-source projects, personal projects, or public forums like Stack Overflow—include the error message and the initial context).

Build the Dialogue Loop

1. Write a basic Python script using the Gemini API.
2. Implement a simple conversational loop: User Input (Bug) -> AI Output (Question) -> User Input (Answer to AI's question) -> AI Output (Next Question). Code Implementation

Socratic/Systemic Strategy Implementation

1. Refine the logic to ensure the questions follow a Socratic and Systemic path (e.g., from symptom-> context -> assumptions -> -> critical parts -> ).
2. Implement Function Calling (an advanced feature of the Gemini API) to suggest specific actions to the user, like "Run a ping test" or "Check the database logs."
3. Implement Bugzillla call to collect the
4. Implement Questioning Framework as LLVM pre-conditioning
5. Define set of instructions
6. Assemble the Tool

Resources

What are Systemic Questions?

Systemic questions explore the relationships, patterns, and interactions within a system rather than focusing on isolated elements.
In IT, they help uncover hidden dependencies, feedback loops, assumptions, and side-effects during debugging or architecture analysis.

Gitlab Project

gitlab.suse.de/sle-prjmgr/BugDecisionCritical_Question

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SUSE Observability MCP server by drutigliano

Description

The idea is to implement the SUSE Observability Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server as a specialized, middle-tier API designed to translate the complex, high-cardinality observability data from StackState (topology, metrics, and events) into highly structured, contextually rich, and LLM-ready snippets.

This MCP Server abstract the StackState APIs. Its primary function is to serve as a Tool/Function Calling target for AI agents. When an AI receives an alert or a user query (e.g., "What caused the outage?"), the AI calls an MCP Server endpoint. The server then fetches the relevant operational facts, summarizes them, normalizes technical identifiers (like URNs and raw metric names) into natural language concepts, and returns a concise JSON or YAML payload. This payload is then injected directly into the LLM's prompt, ensuring the final diagnosis or action is grounded in real-time, accurate SUSE Observability data, effectively minimizing hallucinations.

Goals

• Grounding AI Responses: Ensure that all AI diagnoses, root cause analyses, and action recommendations are strictly based on verifiable, real-time data retrieved from the SUSE Observability StackState platform.
• Simplifying Data Access: Abstract the complexity of StackState's native APIs (e.g., Time Travel, 4T Data Model) into simple, semantic functions that can be easily invoked by LLM tool-calling mechanisms.
• Data Normalization: Convert complex, technical identifiers (like component URNs, raw metric names, and proprietary health states) into standardized, natural language terms that an LLM can easily reason over.
• Enabling Automated Remediation: Define clear, action-oriented MCP endpoints (e.g., execute_runbook) that allow the AI agent to initiate automated operational workflows (e.g., restarts, scaling) after a diagnosis, closing the loop on observability.

 Hackweek STEP

• Create a functional MCP endpoint exposing one (or more) tool(s) to answer queries like "What is the health of service X?") by fetching, normalizing, and returning live StackState data in an LLM-ready format.

 Scope

• Implement read-only MCP server that can:
  • Connect to a live SUSE Observability instance and authenticate (with API token)
  • Use tools to fetch data for a specific component URN (e.g., current health state, metrics, possibly topology neighbors, ...).
  • Normalize response fields (e.g., URN to "Service Name," health state DEVIATING to "Unhealthy", raw metrics).
  • Return the data as a structured JSON payload compliant with the MCP specification.

Deliverables

• MCP Server v0.1 A running Golang MCP server with at least one tool.
• A README.md and a test script (e.g., curl commands or a simple notebook) showing how an AI agent would call the endpoint and the resulting JSON payload.

Outcome A functional and testable API endpoint that proves the core concept: translating complex StackState data into a simple, LLM-ready format. This provides the foundation for developing AI-driven diagnostics and automated remediation.

Resources

• https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/its-the-end-of-observability-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine
• https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/datadog-remote-mcp-server
• https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/index
• https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/develop/build-server

 Basic implementation

• https://github.com/drutigliano19/suse-observability-mcp-server

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Results

Successfully developed and delivered a fully functional SUSE Observability MCP Server that bridges language models with SUSE Observability's operational data. This project demonstrates how AI agents can perform intelligent troubleshooting and root cause analysis using structured access to real-time infrastructure data.

Example execution

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Create a Cloud-Native policy engine with notifying capabilities to optimize resource usage by gbazzotti

Description

The goal of this project is to begin the initial phase of development of an all-in-one Cloud-Native Policy Engine that notifies resource owners when their resources infringe predetermined policies. This was inspired by a current issue in the CES-SRE Team where other solutions seemed to not exactly correspond to the needs of the specific workloads running on the Public Cloud Team space.

The initial architecture can be checked out on the Repository listed under Resources.

Among the features that will differ this project from other monitoring/notification systems:

• Pre-defined sensible policies written at the software-level, avoiding a learning curve by requiring users to write their own policies
• All-in-one functionality: logging, mailing and all other actions are not required to install any additional plugins/packages
• Easy account management, being able to parse all required configuration by a single JSON file
• Eliminate integrations by not requiring metrics to go through a data-agreggator

Goals

• Create a minimal working prototype following the workflow specified on the documentation
• Provide instructions on installation/usage
• Work on email notifying capabilities

Resources

• GitHub Repository

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