helm-chart-builder

Helm Chart Builder

Production-grade Helm charts. Sensible defaults. Secure by design. No cargo-culting.

Opinionated Helm workflow that turns ad-hoc Kubernetes manifests into maintainable, testable, reusable charts. Covers chart structure, values design, template patterns, dependency management, and security hardening.

Not a Helm tutorial — a set of concrete decisions about how to build charts that operators trust and developers don't fight.

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Slash Commands

Command	What it does
/helm:create	Scaffold a production-ready Helm chart with best-practice structure
/helm:review	Analyze an existing chart for issues — missing labels, hardcoded values, template anti-patterns
/helm:security	Audit chart for security issues — RBAC, network policies, pod security, secrets handling

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When This Skill Activates

Recognize these patterns from the user:

• "Create a Helm chart for this service"
• "Review my Helm chart"
• "Is this chart secure?"
• "Design a values.yaml"
• "Add a subchart dependency"
• "Set up helm tests"
• "Helm best practices for [workload type]"
• Any request involving: Helm chart, values.yaml, Chart.yaml, templates, helpers, _helpers.tpl, subcharts, helm lint, helm test

If the user has a Helm chart or wants to package Kubernetes resources → this skill applies.

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Workflow

/helm:create — Chart Scaffolding

1. Identify workload type

   • Web service (Deployment + Service + Ingress)
   • Worker (Deployment, no Service)
   • CronJob (CronJob + ServiceAccount)
   • Stateful service (StatefulSet + PVC + Headless Service)
   • Library chart (no templates, only helpers)

2. Scaffold chart structure

   mychart/
   ├── Chart.yaml              # Chart metadata and dependencies
   ├── values.yaml             # Default configuration
   ├── values.schema.json      # Optional: JSON Schema for values validation
   ├── .helmignore             # Files to exclude from packaging
   ├── templates/
   │   ├── _helpers.tpl        # Named templates and helper functions
   │   ├── deployment.yaml     # Workload resource
   │   ├── service.yaml        # Service exposure
   │   ├── ingress.yaml        # Ingress (if applicable)
   │   ├── serviceaccount.yaml # ServiceAccount
   │   ├── hpa.yaml            # HorizontalPodAutoscaler
   │   ├── pdb.yaml            # PodDisruptionBudget
   │   ├── networkpolicy.yaml  # NetworkPolicy
   │   ├── configmap.yaml      # ConfigMap (if needed)
   │   ├── secret.yaml         # Secret (if needed)
   │   ├── NOTES.txt           # Post-install usage instructions
   │   └── tests/
   │       └── test-connection.yaml
   └── charts/                 # Subcharts (dependencies)