Description
Liz is the Rancher AI assistant for cluster operations.
Goals
We want to help users when sending new messages to Liz, by adding an autocomplete feature to complete their requests based on the context.
Example:
- User prompt: "Can you show me the list of p"
- Autocomplete suggestion: "Can you show me the list of p...od in local cluster?"
Example:
- User prompt: "Show me the logs of #rancher-"
- Chat console: It shows a drop-down widget, next to the # character, with the list of available pod names starting with "rancher-".
Technical Overview
- The AI agent should expose a new ws/autocomplete endpoint to proxy autocomplete messages to the LLM.
- The UI extension should be able to display prompt suggestions and allow users to apply the autocomplete to the Prompt via keyboard shortcuts.
Resources
This project is part of:
Hack Week 25
Activity
Similar Projects
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:
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
Showcase a Go-based deployment automation component, which scans the model registry and automatically generates & applies Kubernetes manifests for new model versions.
Enable continuous improvement by making the system modular and extensible (e.g., additional models, metrics, autoscaling, or drift detection can be added later).
Prepare a short demo explaining the end-to-end process and how new models flow through the system.
Resources
Updates
- Training pipeline and datasets
- Inference Service py
Update M2Crypto by mcepl
There are couple of projects I work on, which need my attention and putting them to shape:
Goal for this Hackweek
- Put M2Crypto into better shape (most issues closed, all pull requests processed)
- More fun to learn jujutsu
- Play more with Gemini, how much it help (or not).
- Perhaps, also (just slightly related), help to fix vis to work with LuaJIT, particularly to make vis-lspc working.
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. 
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! 
issuefs: FUSE filesystem representing issues (e.g. JIRA) for the use with AI agents code-assistants by llansky3
Description
Creating a FUSE filesystem (issuefs) that mounts issues from various ticketing systems (Github, Jira, Bugzilla, Redmine) as files to your local file system.
And why this is good idea?
- User can use favorite command line tools to view and search the tickets from various sources
- User can use AI agents capabilities from your favorite IDE or cli to ask question about the issues, project or functionality while providing relevant tickets as context without extra work.
- User can use it during development of the new features when you let the AI agent to jump start the solution. The issuefs will give the AI agent the context (AI agents just read few more files) about the bug or requested features. No need for copying and pasting issues to user prompt or by using extra MCP tools to access the issues. These you can still do but this approach is on purpose different.
Goals
- Add Github issue support
- Proof the concept/approach by apply the approach on itself using Github issues for tracking and development of new features
- Add support for Bugzilla and Redmine using this approach in the process of doing it. Record a video of it.
- Clean-up and test the implementation and create some documentation
- Create a blog post about this approach
Resources
There is a prototype implementation here. This currently sort of works with JIRA only.
Extended private brain - RAG my own scripts and data into offline LLM AI by tjyrinki_suse
Description
For purely studying purposes, I'd like to find out if I could teach an LLM some of my own accumulated knowledge, to use it as a sort of extended brain.
I might use qwen3-coder or something similar as a starting point.
Everything would be done 100% offline without network available to the container, since I prefer to see when network is needed, and make it so it's never needed (other than initial downloads).
Goals
- Learn something about RAG, LLM, AI.
- Find out if everything works offline as intended.
- As an end result have a new way to access my own existing know-how, but so that I can query the wisdom in them.
- Be flexible to pivot in any direction, as long as there are new things learned.
Resources
To be found on the fly.
Timeline
Day 1 (of 4)
- Tried out a RAG demo, expanded on feeding it my own data
- Experimented with qwen3-coder to add a persistent chat functionality, and keeping vectors in a pickle file
- Optimizations to keep everything within context window
- Learn and add a bit of PyTest
Day 2
- More experimenting and more data
- Study ChromaDB
- Add a Web UI that works from another computer even though the container sees network is down
Day 3
- The above RAG is working well enough for demonstration purposes.
- Pivot to trying out OpenCode, configuring local Ollama qwen3-coder there, to analyze the RAG demo.
- Figured out how to configure Ollama template to be usable under OpenCode. OpenCode locally is super slow to just running qwen3-coder alone.
Day 4 (final day)
- Battle with OpenCode that was both slow and kept on piling up broken things.
- Call it success as after all the agentic AI was working locally.
- Clean up the mess left behind a bit.
Blog Post
Summarized the findings at blog post.
SUSE Virtualization (Harvester): VM Import UI flow by wombelix
Description
SUSE Virtualization (Harvester) has a vm-import-controller that allows migrating VMs from VMware and OpenStack, but users need to write manifest files and apply them with kubectl to use it. This project is about adding the missing UI pieces to the harvester-ui-extension, making VM Imports accessible without requiring Kubernetes and YAML knowledge.
VMware and OpenStack admins aren't automatically familiar with Kubernetes and YAML. Implementing the UI part for the VM Import feature makes it easier to use and more accessible. The Harvester Enhancement Proposal (HEP) VM Migration controller included a UI flow implementation in its scope. Issue #2274 received multiple comments that an UI integration would be a nice addition, and issue #4663 was created to request the implementation but eventually stalled.
Right now users need to manually create either VmwareSource or OpenstackSource resources, then write VirtualMachineImport manifests with network mappings and all the other configuration options. Users should be able to do that and track import status through the UI without writing YAML.
Work during the Hack Week will be done in this fork in a branch called suse-hack-week-25, making progress publicly visible and open for contributions. When everything works out and the branch is in good shape, it will be submitted as a pull request to harvester-ui-extension to get it included in the next Harvester release.
Testing will focus on VMware since that's what is available in the lab environment (SUSE Virtualization 1.6 single-node cluster, ESXi 8.0 standalone host). Given that this is about UI and surfacing what the vm-import-controller handles, the implementation should work for OpenStack imports as well.
This project is also a personal challenge to learn vue.js and get familiar with Rancher Extensions development, since harvester-ui-extension is built on that framework.
Goals
- Learn Vue.js and Rancher Extensions fundamentals required to finish the project
- Read and learn from other Rancher UI Extensions code, especially understanding the
harvester-ui-extensioncode base - Understand what the
vm-import-controllerand its CRDs require, identify ready to use components in the Rancher UI Extension API that can be leveraged - Implement UI logic for creating and managing
VmwareSource/OpenstackSourceandVirtualMachineImportresources with all relevant configuration options and credentials - Implemnt UI elements to display
VirtualMachineImportstatus and errors
Resources
HEP and related discussion
- https://github.com/harvester/harvester/blob/master/enhancements/20220726-vm-migration.md
- https://github.com/harvester/harvester/issues/2274
- https://github.com/harvester/harvester/issues/4663
SUSE Virtualization VM Import Documentation
Rancher Extensions Documentation
Rancher UI Plugin Examples
Vue Router Essentials
Vue Router API
Vuex Documentation
Improve chore and screen time doc generator script `wochenplaner` by gniebler
Description
I wrote a little Python script to generate PDF docs, which can be used to track daily chore completion and screen time usage for several people, with one page per person/week.
I named this script wochenplaner and have been using it for a few months now.
It needs some improvements and adjustments in how the screen time should be tracked and how chores are displayed.
Goals
- Fix chore field separation lines
- Change screen time tracking logic from "global" (week-long) to daily subtraction and weekly addition of remainders (more intuitive than current "weekly time budget method)
- Add logic to fill in chore fields/lines, ideally with pictures, falling back to text.
Resources
tbd (Gitlab repo)
Collection and organisation of information about Bulgarian schools by iivanov
Description
To achieve this it will be necessary:
- Collect/download raw data from various government and non-governmental organizations
- Clean up raw data and organise it in some kind database.
- Create tool to make queries easy.
- Or perhaps dump all data into AI and ask questions in natural language.
Goals
By selecting particular school information like this will be provided:
- School scores on national exams.
- School scores from the external evaluations exams.
- School town, municipality and region.
- Employment rate in a town or municipality.
- Average health of the population in the region.
Resources
Some of these are available only in bulgarian.
- https://danybon.com/klasazia
- https://nvoresults.com/index.html
- https://ri.mon.bg/active-institutions
- https://www.nsi.bg/nrnm/ekatte/archive
Results
- Information about all Bulgarian schools with their scores during recent years cleaned and organised into SQL tables
- Information about all Bulgarian villages, cities, municipalities and districts cleaned and organised into SQL tables
- Information about all Bulgarian villages and cities census since beginning of this century cleaned and organised into SQL tables.
- Information about all Bulgarian municipalities about religion, ethnicity cleaned and organised into SQL tables.
- Data successfully loaded to locally running Ollama with help to Vanna.AI
- Seems to be usable.
TODO
- Add more statistical information about municipalities and ....
Code and data
Update M2Crypto by mcepl
There are couple of projects I work on, which need my attention and putting them to shape:
Goal for this Hackweek
- Put M2Crypto into better shape (most issues closed, all pull requests processed)
- More fun to learn jujutsu
- Play more with Gemini, how much it help (or not).
- Perhaps, also (just slightly related), help to fix vis to work with LuaJIT, particularly to make vis-lspc working.
Enhance git-sha-verify: A tool to checkout validated git hashes by gpathak
Description
git-sha-verify is a simple shell utility to verify and checkout trusted git commits signed using GPG key. This tool helps ensure that only authorized or validated commit hashes are checked out from a git repository, supporting better code integrity and security within the workflow.
Supports:
- Verifying commit authenticity signed using gpg key
- Checking out trusted commits
Ideal for teams and projects where the integrity of git history is crucial.
Goals
A minimal python code of the shell script exists as a pull request.
The goal of this hackweek is to:
- DONE: Add more unit tests
- New and more tests can be added later
- New and more tests can be added later
- Partially DONE: Make the python code modular
- DONE: Add code coverage if possible
Resources
- Link to GitHub Repository: https://github.com/openSUSE/git-sha-verify
Improve/rework household chore tracker `chorazon` by gniebler
Description
I wrote a household chore tracker named chorazon, which is meant to be deployed as a web application in the household's local network.
It features the ability to set up different (so far only weekly) schedules per task and per person, where tasks may span several days.
There are "tokens", which can be collected by users. Tasks can (and usually will) have rewards configured where they yield a certain amount of tokens. The idea is that they can later be redeemed for (surprise) gifts, but this is not implemented yet. (So right now one needs to edit the DB manually to subtract tokens when they're redeemed.)
Days are not rolled over automatically, to allow for task completion control.
We used it in my household for several months, with mixed success. There are many limitations in the system that would warrant a revisit.
It's written using the Pyramid Python framework with URL traversal, ZODB as the data store and Web Components for the frontend.
Goals
- Add admin screens for users, tasks and schedules
- Add models, pages etc. to allow redeeming tokens for gifts/surprises
- …?
Resources
tbd (Gitlab repo)
Rancher/k8s Trouble-Maker by tonyhansen
Project Description
When studying for my RHCSA, I found trouble-maker, which is a program that breaks a Linux OS and requires you to fix it. I want to create something similar for Rancher/k8s that can allow for troubleshooting an unknown environment.
Goals for Hackweek 25
- Update to modern Rancher and verify that existing tests still work
- Change testing logic to populate secrets instead of requiring a secondary script
- Add new tests
Goals for Hackweek 24 (Complete)
- Create a basic framework for creating Rancher/k8s cluster lab environments as needed for the Break/Fix
- Create at least 5 modules that can be applied to the cluster and require troubleshooting
Resources
- https://github.com/celidon/rancher-troublemaker
- https://github.com/rancher/terraform-provider-rancher2
- https://github.com/rancher/tf-rancher-up
- https://github.com/rancher/quickstart
Cluster API Provider for Harvester by rcase
Project Description
The Cluster API "infrastructure provider" for Harvester, also named CAPHV, makes it possible to use Harvester with Cluster API. This enables people and organisations to create Kubernetes clusters running on VMs created by Harvester using a declarative spec.
The project has been bootstrapped in HackWeek 23, and its code is available here.
Work done in HackWeek 2023
- Have a early working version of the provider available on Rancher Sandbox : *DONE *
- Demonstrated the created cluster can be imported using Rancher Turtles: DONE
- Stretch goal - demonstrate using the new provider with CAPRKE2: DONE and the templates are available on the repo
DONE in HackWeek 24:
- Add more Unit Tests
- Improve Status Conditions for some phases
- Add cloud provider config generation
- Testing with Harvester v1.3.2
- Template improvements
- Issues creation
DONE in 2025 (out of Hackweek)
- Support of ClusterClass
- Add to
clusterctlcommunity providers, you can add it directly withclusterctl - Testing on newer versions of Harvester v1.4.X and v1.5.X
- Support for
clusterctl generate cluster ... - Improve Status Conditions to reflect current state of Infrastructure
- Improve CI (some bugs for release creation)
Goals for HackWeek 2025
- FIRST and FOREMOST, any topic is important to you
- Add e2e testing
- Certify the provider for Rancher Turtles
- Add Machine pool labeling
- Add PCI-e passthrough capabilities.
- Other improvement suggestions are welcome!
Thanks to @isim and Dominic Giebert for their contributions!
Resources
Looking for help from anyone interested in Cluster API (CAPI) or who wants to learn more about Harvester.
This will be an infrastructure provider for Cluster API. Some background reading for the CAPI aspect:
Rancher Cluster Lifecycle Visualizer by jferraz
Description
Rancher’s v2 provisioning system represents each downstream cluster with several Kubernetes custom resources across multiple API groups, such as clusters.provisioning.cattle.io and clusters.management.cattle.io. Understanding why a cluster is stuck in states like "Provisioning", "Updating", or "Unavailable" often requires jumping between these resources, reading conditions, and correlating them with agent connectivity and known failure modes.
This project will build a Cluster Lifecycle Visualizer: a small, read-only controller that runs in the Rancher management cluster and generates a single, human-friendly view per cluster. It will watch Rancher cluster CRDs, derive a simplified lifecycle phase, keep a history of phase transitions from installation time onward, and attach a short, actionable recommendation string that hints at what the operator should check or do next.
Goals
- Provide a compact lifecycle summary for each Rancher-managed cluster (e.g.
Provisioning,WaitingForClusterAgent,Active,Updating,Error) derived fromprovisioning.cattle.io/v1 Clusterandmanagement.cattle.io/v3 Clusterstatus and conditions. - Maintain a phase history for each cluster, allowing operators to see how its state evolved over time since the visualizer was installed.
- Attach a recommended action to the current phase using a small ruleset based on common Rancher failure modes (for example, cluster agent not connected, cluster still stabilizing after an upgrade, or generic error states), to improve the day-to-day debugging experience.
- Deliver an easy-to-install, read-only component (single YAML or small Helm chart) that Rancher users can deploy to their management cluster and inspect via
kubectl get/describe, without UI changes or direct access to downstream clusters. - Use idiomatic Go, wrangler, and Rancher APIs.
Resources
- Rancher Manager documentation on RKE2 and K3s cluster configuration and provisioning flows.
- Rancher API Go types for
provisioning.cattle.io/v1andmanagement.cattle.io/v3(from therancher/rancherrepository or published Go packages). - Existing Rancher architecture docs and internal notes about cluster provisioning, cluster agents, and node agents.
- A local Rancher management cluster (k3s or RKE2) with a few test downstream clusters to validate phase detection, history tracking, and recommendations.
SUSE Virtualization (Harvester): VM Import UI flow by wombelix
Description
SUSE Virtualization (Harvester) has a vm-import-controller that allows migrating VMs from VMware and OpenStack, but users need to write manifest files and apply them with kubectl to use it. This project is about adding the missing UI pieces to the harvester-ui-extension, making VM Imports accessible without requiring Kubernetes and YAML knowledge.
VMware and OpenStack admins aren't automatically familiar with Kubernetes and YAML. Implementing the UI part for the VM Import feature makes it easier to use and more accessible. The Harvester Enhancement Proposal (HEP) VM Migration controller included a UI flow implementation in its scope. Issue #2274 received multiple comments that an UI integration would be a nice addition, and issue #4663 was created to request the implementation but eventually stalled.
Right now users need to manually create either VmwareSource or OpenstackSource resources, then write VirtualMachineImport manifests with network mappings and all the other configuration options. Users should be able to do that and track import status through the UI without writing YAML.
Work during the Hack Week will be done in this fork in a branch called suse-hack-week-25, making progress publicly visible and open for contributions. When everything works out and the branch is in good shape, it will be submitted as a pull request to harvester-ui-extension to get it included in the next Harvester release.
Testing will focus on VMware since that's what is available in the lab environment (SUSE Virtualization 1.6 single-node cluster, ESXi 8.0 standalone host). Given that this is about UI and surfacing what the vm-import-controller handles, the implementation should work for OpenStack imports as well.
This project is also a personal challenge to learn vue.js and get familiar with Rancher Extensions development, since harvester-ui-extension is built on that framework.
Goals
- Learn Vue.js and Rancher Extensions fundamentals required to finish the project
- Read and learn from other Rancher UI Extensions code, especially understanding the
harvester-ui-extensioncode base - Understand what the
vm-import-controllerand its CRDs require, identify ready to use components in the Rancher UI Extension API that can be leveraged - Implement UI logic for creating and managing
VmwareSource/OpenstackSourceandVirtualMachineImportresources with all relevant configuration options and credentials - Implemnt UI elements to display
VirtualMachineImportstatus and errors
Resources
HEP and related discussion
- https://github.com/harvester/harvester/blob/master/enhancements/20220726-vm-migration.md
- https://github.com/harvester/harvester/issues/2274
- https://github.com/harvester/harvester/issues/4663
SUSE Virtualization VM Import Documentation
Rancher Extensions Documentation
Rancher UI Plugin Examples
Vue Router Essentials
Vue Router API
Vuex Documentation
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.
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!