Scale Argo CD across hundreds of clusters with a single pane of glass π
Imagine managing GitOps deployments across edge locations, multiple cloud providers, air-gapped environments, and remote sitesβall from one central dashboard. argocd-agent makes this reality by extending Argo CD with a distributed architecture that brings the control plane to you, no matter where your workloads live.
The Challenge: Traditional multi-cluster Argo CD setups hit walls when scaling to hundreds of clusters, especially across unreliable networks, air-gapped environments, or edge locations.
The Solution: argocd-agent flips the scriptβinstead of your control plane reaching out to remote clusters, lightweight agents reach back to a central hub. This "pull model" enables:
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Massive Scale: Manage thousands of applications across hundreds of clusters
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Network Resilience: Works with intermittent connections, high latency, or restricted networks
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Edge-Friendly: Perfect for IoT, retail, manufacturing, or remote deployments
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Air-Gap Ready: Secure deployments that never expose cluster internals
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Cloud Agnostic: Seamlessly span AWS, GCP, Azure, on-premises, and hybrid environments
- π Manufacturing: Deploy to factory floors and remote facilities
- π Retail: Manage point-of-sale and in-store systems across locations
- π’ Edge Computing: IoT deployments, autonomous vehicles, ships, and remote sites
- ποΈ Enterprise: Multi-datacenter deployments with strict security requirements
- βοΈ Multi-Cloud: Unified GitOps across different cloud providers
- π Air-Gapped: Secure environments with restricted network access
Get up and running in minutes! Check out our Getting Started Guide for step-by-step instructions.
# 1. Set up the control plane (where your Argo CD UI lives)
kubectl apply -k https://github.com/argoproj-labs/argocd-agent/install/kubernetes/principal
# 2. Deploy agents to your workload clusters
kubectl apply -k https://github.com/argoproj-labs/argocd-agent/install/kubernetes/agent
# 3. Watch the magic happen β¨
Want to try it out? Our getting started guide gets you running with a local environment in under 10 minutes.
Think of argocd-agent as a hub-and-spoke architecture where agents reach back to the control plane:
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β Control Plane β β Your Argo CD UI and API
β (The Hub) β (No outbound connections needed!)
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β² β² β²
β β β
β β β
βββββββββββββββ β βββββββββββββββ
β β β
β β β
βββββββββββ βββββββββββ βββββββββββ
β Agent 1 β β Agent 2 β β Agent N β β Each agent connects independently
β AWS β β Factory β β Edge β (Pull model - no inter-agent links!)
βββββββββββ βββββββββββ βββββββββββ
ποΈ Control Plane: Your familiar Argo CD interfaceβmanage everything from one place
π€ Agents: Lightweight components that reach out and connect to the hub
π Smart Sync: Agents pull configuration and push status updates automatically
π― Managed Mode: Perfect for centralized control
- Deploy applications from your control plane to remote clusters
- Ideal for rolling out updates, managing configurations, and maintaining consistency
π¦Ύ Autonomous Mode: Built for independence
- Remote clusters manage their own applications (via GitOps)
- Control plane provides observability and monitoring
- Perfect for air-gapped or highly autonomous environments
Mix and match modes across your fleetβsome clusters managed, others autonomous, all visible from one dashboard.
- mTLS everywhere: All communications are encrypted and authenticated
- Zero trust: Control plane never needs direct cluster access
- Certificate-based auth: Strong identity verification for every agent
- Intermittent connections: Agents work offline and sync when possible
- High latency tolerant: Designed for satellite links, cellular, and unreliable networks
- HTTP/1.1 compatible: Works through corporate proxies and legacy infrastructure
- Single pane of glass: See all clusters, applications, and deployments in one view
- Real-time status: Health, sync status, and metrics from all environments
- Live resources: Inspect Kubernetes resources across your entire fleet
- Lightweight: Minimal resource footprint on remote clusters
- Self-healing: Agents automatically reconnect and recover
- Easy upgrades: Rolling updates without downtime
π± Early Days: argocd-agent is in active development and not yet ready for production use. We're building in the open to collaborate with the community and gather feedback early.
What works today:
- β Basic hub-and-spoke architecture
- β Application deployment and status sync
- β Multi-cluster observability
- β Both managed and autonomous modes
- β Live resource viewing and manipulation
- β Custom resource actions
- β Resource proxy for transparent cluster access
Coming soon:
- π§ Pod logs streaming
- π§ Advanced RBAC and multi-tenancy
- π§ Enhanced UI integrations
- π§ Production hardening
Track our progress in the roadmap and milestones.
We're building argocd-agent together! Whether you're a GitOps veteran or just getting started, there are many ways to contribute:
π¬ Get Help & Share Ideas
- GitHub Discussions - Ask questions, share use cases
- #argo-cd-agent on CNCF Slack - Real-time chat
π οΈ Contribute
- Contributing Guide - Code, docs, and testing guidelines
- Issue Tracker - Bug reports and feature requests
- Good First Issues - Perfect for newcomers
π Learn More
- Documentation - Comprehensive guides and references
- Architecture Deep Dive - Understanding the internals
- Configuration Guide - Detailed setup instructions
argocd-agent is not yet production-ready but we're working hard to get there! If you're interested in:
- π§ͺ Testing in dev/staging environments
- π€ Contributing to development
- πΌ Enterprise partnerships
- π£οΈ Speaking about your use case
We'd love to hear from you! Start a discussion or reach out on Slack.
argocd-agent is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
Built with β€οΈ by the Argo community
β Star us on GitHub | π Read the Docs | π¬ Join the Discussion