KubeDiagrams: Transforming Kubernetes Manifests into Architecture Diagrams

Introduction

If your “architecture diagram” lives in a slide deck that nobody updates, you already know the problem: Kubernetes changes constantly, and documentation becomes stale the moment it’s most needed—during onboarding, reviews, and incidents.

KubeDiagrams, introduced in May 2025, is an open-source tool that turns Kubernetes manifests (and Helm output) into architecture diagrams. It’s built around real-world visualization practices: preserving Kubernetes semantics while making relationships and dependencies easier to reason about.

Why this matters in practice

• Onboarding: new engineers can map “what runs where” without mentally parsing dozens of YAML files.
• Review and change control: diagrams-as-code make diffs and architecture discussions less subjective.
• Troubleshooting: seeing resource relationships can surface “hidden” dependencies faster than log spelunking.
• Documentation hygiene: generated diagrams are harder to forget to update.

Manifest-to-Diagram Transformation

• Automatic generation automatically generates architecture diagrams from Kubernetes YAML manifests and Helm charts.
• Multi-format support processes standard Kubernetes resources including Deployments, Services, Ingress, ConfigMaps, and more.
• Relationship mapping visualizes relationships and dependencies between Kubernetes resources.
• Semantic preservation maintains semantic fidelity to core Kubernetes concepts in visual representation.

Comprehensive Visualization

1. Resource hierarchy displays the hierarchical structure of Kubernetes resources across namespaces and clusters.
2. Network topology shows network connections, service dependencies, and traffic flow patterns.
3. Storage relationships visualizes PersistentVolumes, PersistentVolumeClaims, and storage class relationships.
4. RBAC visualization represents role-based access control structures and service account relationships.

Enhanced System Comprehension

• Visual navigation provides intuitive visual navigation of complex Kubernetes deployments.
• Component identification quickly identifies components, their roles, and relationships in the system.
• Dependency analysis visualizes dependencies between applications, services, and infrastructure components.
• Multi-level views supports both high-level architectural views and detailed resource-level diagrams.

Architectural Reasoning

• Design documentation generates documentation-quality diagrams for system design and architecture reviews.
• Change visualization tracks and visualizes changes in system architecture over time.
• Impact analysis helps understand the impact of changes before applying them to clusters.
• Best practices highlights potential architectural issues and suggests improvements based on Kubernetes best practices.

Developer Experience

• Easy integration integrates seamlessly with existing Kubernetes workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
• Export options exports diagrams in multiple formats including PNG, SVG, PDF, and interactive HTML.
• Customization allows customization of diagram styles, layouts, and detail levels.
• Version control generates diagrams as code, enabling version control and automated updates.

Real-World Use Cases

• Onboarding accelerates onboarding of new team members by providing visual system documentation.
• Architecture reviews supports architecture reviews and design discussions with clear visual representations.
• Documentation automatically generates and maintains up-to-date architecture documentation.
• Troubleshooting aids troubleshooting by visualizing system structure and relationships.

Getting Started

# Install KubeDiagrams
curl -L https://github.com/kubediagrams/kubediagrams/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

# Generate diagram from Kubernetes manifests
kubediagrams generate -f deployment.yaml -o architecture.png

# Generate diagram from live cluster
kubectl get all -n production -o yaml | kubediagrams generate -o production-arch.png

# Generate interactive HTML diagram
kubediagrams generate -f deployment.yaml -o architecture.html --format html

Generate diagram from Helm chart:

# Generate diagram from Helm chart
helm template my-app ./chart | kubediagrams generate -o chart-architecture.png

# Include all resources
kubediagrams generate -f deployment.yaml service.yaml ingress.yaml -o full-architecture.png

Define custom diagram configuration:

# kubediagrams.yaml
apiVersion: kubediagrams.io/v1alpha1
kind: DiagramConfig
metadata:
  name: production-architecture
spec:
  outputFormat: png
  style: modern
  includeNamespaces:
    - production
    - staging
  resourceFilters:
    - kind: Pod
      exclude: true
  layout:
    direction: left-to-right
    grouping: namespace

Integration Options

• CI/CD integration automatically generates diagrams as part of CI/CD pipelines for documentation updates.
• Git hooks generates diagrams on commit or push to keep documentation synchronized.
• Kubernetes operators provides Kubernetes operators for continuous diagram generation from cluster state.
• API access exposes REST APIs for programmatic diagram generation and integration with other tools.

Supported Resource Types

• Workloads: Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, CronJobs
• Services: Services, Endpoints, Ingress, Gateway API resources
• Configuration: ConfigMaps, Secrets, ServiceAccounts
• Storage: PersistentVolumes, PersistentVolumeClaims, StorageClasses
• Networking: NetworkPolicies, ServiceMeshes, CNI configurations
• RBAC: Roles, RoleBindings, ClusterRoles, ClusterRoleBindings

Summary

KubeDiagrams fills a critical gap in the Kubernetes ecosystem, providing developers, architects, and operators with powerful visualization tools that make complex distributed systems more understandable, documentable, and manageable.