MCTL

What is MCTL? ​

MCTL is an AI-native infrastructure management platform that lets you control Kubernetes infrastructure through natural language, REST APIs, or a developer portal.

The Problem ​

Managing Kubernetes is complex. Teams need to:

  • Write and maintain Helm charts, Kustomize overlays, and ArgoCD configs
  • Handle networking, TLS, DNS, and ingress rules
  • Set up RBAC, resource quotas, and namespace isolation
  • Monitor deployments, troubleshoot failures, and perform rollbacks

This requires deep platform engineering expertise that most teams don't have.

The Solution ​

MCTL abstracts the complexity behind a unified control plane:

  • Natural language — connect Claude, Cursor, or VS Code via MCP and manage infrastructure conversationally
  • REST API — integrate with CI/CD pipelines, scripts, and custom tooling
  • Developer Portal — Backstage-powered UI for browsing services, tenants, and operations
  • GitOps — declared service configuration is committed to Git and reconciled by ArgoCD

How It Works ​

  1. You make a request — via MCP tool, API call, or portal action
  2. The API or portal processes it — validates access and submits the relevant workflow
  3. The workflow runs — builds/provisions resources and commits service configuration to mctl-gitops
  4. ArgoCD syncs — detects the diff and applies it to the cluster
  5. Operation completes — you can track progress via the returned workflow name

Workflow-backed writes return a workflow name. Reads and registry updates can complete synchronously; their responses and persistence differ by operation.

Core Principles ​

GitOps-first — Git owns declared service configuration. Provisioning, previews, secrets and registry state also use their dedicated workflows and stores.

Multi-tenant — each team gets isolated namespaces with RBAC policies and resource quotas. Access is governed by policy on a shared cluster.

AI-native — built from the ground up for AI interaction. The MCP server exposes tools according to the deployed version and caller permissions.

Self-healing — the mctl-agent watches AlertManager and can propose fixes and open PRs for review.