Kustomize Kubernetes Config

Manage Kubernetes manifests with Kustomize overlays. Generates bases, environment overlays, strategic merge patches, JSON patches, ConfigMap/Secret generators, replacements, and components.

This skill covers Kustomize: structuring bases and overlays for dev/staging/prod, writing strategic-merge and JSON6902 patches, ConfigMapGenerator and SecretGenerator with hash suffixes for rollouts on change, replacements (the modern alternative to varReference), components for cross-cutting concerns, and using Kustomize with Helm via the helmCharts inflator. Covers integration with ArgoCD/Flux and kubectl -k workflows.

When to use

Use when structuring manifests across environments, applying patches without templating, generating versioned ConfigMaps, or migrating from raw YAML to Kustomize.

Examples

Environment overlays

Bootstrap base + dev/staging/prod

Convert my flat manifests into a Kustomize structure with a base and dev/staging/prod overlays — replicas, resource limits, ingress hosts, and image tags should be overlay-specific

ConfigMap rollout on change

Force pod restart when config changes

Use ConfigMapGenerator with a hash suffix so when I change values in env-config.properties the Deployment rolls automatically — show me both the kustomization.yaml and the resulting hashed name reference