Quick start

Point the CLI at your kobe endpoint

kobe config set endpoint https://kobe.example.com

Or open the interactive config editor:

kobe config

Authenticate

kobe login

kobe supports SSH key auth (Ed25519 via your SSH agent), OIDC tokens, and static bearer tokens. The login flow detects which methods your endpoint accepts and guides you through the appropriate one.

To check which auth methods are available on your endpoint:

kobe status

List available pools

kobe status

This shows the endpoint version, available auth methods, pool summary, and your active leases.

Lease a cluster

kobe lease ci-small

kobe writes the kubeconfig to ~/.kube/kobe-<lease-id> by default and prints the lease ID and expiry. The cluster is ready to use immediately.

To write to a specific path:

kobe lease ci-small --kubeconfig /tmp/kube.yaml

To request a longer TTL (within your policy's maxTtl):

kobe lease ci-small --ttl 2h

Use the cluster

KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/kobe-<lease-id> kubectl get nodes

The cluster is a fully isolated Kubernetes environment. It won't affect other callers, and all resources you create are destroyed with it when the lease expires or is released.

Release the cluster

kobe release <lease-id>

This immediately destroys the cluster and returns it to the pool for recycling. Releasing early is good practice in CI — it lets the pool refill faster for the next run.