CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

What this is

Infrastructure-as-code for a small K3s homelab. There is no application source code to build or test here — this repo is the infrastructure: Ansible for host bootstrap, Argo CD for GitOps reconciliation of the cluster, and raw Kubernetes manifests / Helm values for service configuration. "Testing" a change means applying it (via ansible-playbook, kubectl, or letting Argo CD sync) and checking real cluster/service state — there are no unit tests.

Full operational detail (bootstrap sequence, secrets workflow, storage layout, URL list, gotchas) lives in the root README.md — read it before making non-trivial changes. Scoped README.md files in ansible/, argocd/, and manifests/ cover directory-specific workflows.

Operating rules for Claude Code

There is no staging environment. Argo CD watches main on the Gitea remote directly, and most Applications run with selfHeal: true (see Architecture below) — so git push to main, especially anything under manifests/, values/, or argocd/, is a production deploy, not just a code change, and Argo CD will keep re-asserting it even against manual cluster edits. Never push to main without the user's explicit go-ahead for that specific push — an earlier approval to commit is not approval to push.
Never run a command that needs the user's own credentials (API/personal access tokens, passwords, anything destined for .env or an MCP -e flag) directly, and don't hand it back as an inline ! command either. Write the exact command to a file (e.g. under the session scratch/tmp directory — never committed) and ask the user to open it, review it, and run it themselves. This keeps secrets out of the conversation transcript.

Architecture

Three-layer flow: Ansible brings up hosts and anything that must run outside Kubernetes → Argo CD (manifests/argocd/app-of-apps.yaml → argocd/apps/*.yaml) reconciles everything else from Git → each Application points at either a raw manifest directory under manifests/ or a Helm chart configured by values/*.yaml.

Hosts (see ansible/inventory.yaml):

Host	IP	Role
`minisforum`	`10.10.40.53`	K3s server, Traefik entrypoint, primary app node
`debian`	`10.10.40.20`	K3s agent, NFS storage (`/mnt/storage`), secondary Pi-hole
`mac-mini`	`10.10.40.30`	Standalone Docker host — Watch Party, Ollama (not in the K3s cluster)
`gpu-node`	`10.10.40.12`	K3s agent with NVIDIA GPU, tainted `spot=true:NoSchedule`, labeled `node-role: gpu`; runs Ollama directly on the host, not as a pod

K3s's bundled Traefik and ingress controller are disabled — Traefik is installed and managed through Argo CD instead. Internal services live under home.arpa (internal CA via cert-manager, no wildcard DNS — every hostname must be added explicitly to both values/pihole.yaml and values/pihole-debian.yaml). Public services live under nik4nao.com (Let's Encrypt).

Repo layout

Path	Purpose
`ansible/`	Host bootstrap and non-Kubernetes services (inventory, roles, playbooks, `group_vars/`, `host_vars/`)
`argocd/apps/`	One file per Argo CD `Application`
`argocd/values/`	Helm values for installing/reconciling Argo CD itself
`manifests/`	Raw Kubernetes resources grouped by service area (see `manifests/README.md`)
`values/`	Helm values consumed by Argo CD `Application`s for third-party charts
`config/dashy/`	Dashy dashboard config, injected via a script (not the raw manifest)
`router/`	OpenWRT (UCI) config backup for the network router — not part of the Ansible/K3s flow

Ansible

Three inventory groups (k3s_server, k3s_agents, mac_mini) plus gpu_workstation (see ansible/inventory.yaml). Per-host variables live in ansible/host_vars/<host>.yaml; shared/secret vars in ansible/group_vars/all/vault.yaml. Roles are composed per playbook, e.g. ansible/playbooks/setup-gpu-node.yaml runs common → docker → nvidia → k3s-agent → ollama → glances against gpu_workstation. Note there are two ansible.cfg files (repo root and ansible/) — check which one is active for the working directory a command is run from before assuming inventory defaults.

The ollama role branches on ansible_facts['system'] to support both the Mac Mini (Homebrew + launchd) and Linux GPU nodes (install script + systemd), so changes to it must keep both code paths working.

Argo CD

Most Applications use automated sync with selfHeal: true and prune: false — Argo CD corrects drift but does not delete cluster resources removed from Git; matching manual cleanup is often required. targetRevision: main is the default for repo-managed sources.

Secrets

Never commit plaintext secrets. Two patterns coexist, both listed in manifests/README.md:

Runtime scripts (manifests/**/*-secret.sh) read .env (copy from .env.example) and create Kubernetes Secrets directly against the live cluster — nothing plaintext is committed.
Sealed Secrets (*-sealed.yaml) are safe to commit; regenerate them with the matching script and commit the resulting YAML. kubeseal must point at the in-cluster sealed-secrets-controller (kube-system).

ansible/group_vars/all/vault.yaml holds Ansible-side secrets (e.g. vault_k3s_node_token) referenced from host_vars.

Validation commands

No cluster access is required for any of these — run them before reporting a change done, and show the actual output, not just a claim it passed.

yamllint -c .yamllint.yml .
ansible-lint ansible/
for pb in ansible/playbooks/*.yaml; do
  ansible-playbook --syntax-check -i ansible/inventory.yaml "$pb"
done
kubeconform -summary -ignore-missing-schemas -kubernetes-version 1.32.0 \
  -schema-location default \
  -schema-location 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/datreeio/CRDs-catalog/main/{{.Group}}/{{.ResourceKind}}_{{.ResourceAPIVersion}}.json' \
  $(find manifests -name "*.yaml" -not -name "*-sealed.yaml") argocd/apps/*.yaml

ansible-lint needs the collections in ansible/requirements.yml installed first (ansible-galaxy collection install -r ansible/requirements.yml), otherwise it reports spurious unknown-module errors for community.general/ community.docker modules that are actually fine.

Key gotchas (see README.md "Gotchas" for the full list)

Pi-hole has no wildcard DNS — add every new home.arpa hostname to both Pi-hole values files.
Gitea uses a manual public IngressRoute; its Helm-chart ingress is disabled in values/gitea.yaml. Changing ROOT_URL may require deleting the generated inline config secret before Argo CD reconciles cleanly.
Secondary Pi-hole's external IPs can be lost on chart upgrades — rerun manifests/network/pihole-debian-patch.sh.
Dashy's manifest ships an empty ConfigMap shell; real config only lands after running manifests/core/apply-dashy-config.sh.
A newly pushed Argo CD Application doesn't create its namespace instantly — app-of-apps only picks it up on its next Git poll. A namespace-scoped secret script run immediately after pushing can fail with namespaces "<ns>" not found until then (or until a forced refresh).

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