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The Ryvn Agent solves the fundamental challenge of managing applications across distributed, isolated cloud environments without requiring inbound network access. As a Kubernetes operator deployed within each target cluster, it maintains a secure connection to Ryvn’s control plane while executing deployment operations with full environmental autonomy.

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Architecture

The agent’s architecture optimizes for three critical constraints: network isolation in enterprise environments, operational reliability across unreliable networks, and security requirements of multi-tenant deployments. These constraints drive three core architectural decisions.

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Stateless operation

The agent maintains zero persistent state, operating purely as a computation layer between the Ryvn Hub’s desired state and the cluster’s actual state. This stateless design enables horizontal scaling and eliminates data loss risks—any agent instance can be terminated and restarted without operational impact. New instances immediately resume operations by querying current state from the Hub. Each task execution is atomic and idempotent. Interrupted operations can safely retry without risk of partial state corruption or duplicate resource creation. The agent achieves this through Kubernetes’ declarative API—all operations are expressed as desired state rather than imperative commands.

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Pull-based communication

Network architecture follows a strict egress-only model. The agent establishes outbound HTTPS connections to the Ryvn Hub, periodically polling for pending tasks. This design eliminates several attack vectors: no ingress rules, no port forwarding, no reverse proxies. The agent operates successfully behind enterprise proxies, within air-gapped networks, and across NAT boundaries. The pull model ensures that customer environments never accept inbound connections. All communication originates from within the secure perimeter, maintaining compliance with zero-trust network architectures while enabling full deployment capabilities.

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Reconciliation loop

Beyond executing new deployments, the agent continuously reconciles deployed resources. This reconciliation operates independently, comparing Hub-declared desired state against cluster actual state and correcting any drift. The reconciliation engine handles both expected and unexpected changes. When cluster state diverges from desired state—whether through manual changes, node failures, or resource constraints—the agent automatically corrects the drift. This ensures applications remain in their intended state without manual intervention.

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Task execution

Tasks represent atomic units of work: deploy a Helm chart, execute a Terraform module, or update configurations. Each task carries a manifest specifying the operation type, target resources, and execution parameters. Execution follows a validation-first approach. The agent verifies prerequisites, ensures resource availability, and confirms permissions before proceeding. Required artifacts—Helm charts, container images, or Terraform modules—are fetched securely using injected credentials that are never persisted locally. The execution engine supports concurrent task processing with intelligent conflict prevention. Operations targeting the same resources serialize automatically, while independent deployments proceed in parallel. This maximizes throughput while preventing race conditions or resource conflicts.

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Security

Security implementation addresses three core threat models: compromised agent pods, intercepted communications, and unauthorized task execution.

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RBAC & permissions

The agent operates with minimal required permissions following least-privilege principles. Permissions are scoped to specific namespaces and resource types, preventing access to unrelated workloads. This model enables multi-tenant isolation—each tenant’s resources remain completely isolated even if an agent instance is compromised. The permission model enforces strict boundaries. The agent cannot escalate its own privileges, access host resources, or modify security policies. All operations are audited, providing complete visibility into agent actions for security teams.

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Authentication

Multi-factor authentication secures agent-to-hub communication. JWT tokens establish agent identity with automatic refresh to ensure continuous operation. Token scopes limit each agent to its designated environment and authorized operations—a production agent cannot execute tasks in development environments. TLS mutual authentication provides an additional security layer. Both agent and hub validate each other’s certificates, preventing man-in-the-middle attacks. Combined with token-based authorization, this creates defense-in-depth against communication interception.

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Secret handling

Secrets are protected throughout their lifecycle. The Hub encrypts sensitive values before transmission using environment-specific keys. Each environment’s secrets remain cryptographically isolated—a key compromise in one environment cannot decrypt secrets from another. Encrypted secrets transmit over the already-secure TLS channel, providing double encryption. Upon receipt, the agent decrypts values in-memory and immediately creates Kubernetes Secrets for application use. Applications access secrets through standard Kubernetes mechanisms, maintaining separation between the agent and application workloads.

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Cloud abstraction

The agent provides a unified interface across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, abstracting platform differences while exposing native capabilities. At the Kubernetes level, the agent handles distribution-specific authentication and networking. Applications access cloud services using platform-native identity mechanisms without requiring platform-specific code. The agent translates generic requirements into appropriate configurations for each cloud provider. For infrastructure provisioning through Terraform, the agent uses cloud-native identity mechanisms. Each cloud platform provides pod-level identity—Azure Workload Identity, AWS IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts), and GCP Workload Identity Federation—that eliminates stored credentials while providing scoped access to cloud resources. These persistent identities are managed by the cloud platforms and bound to specific service accounts and namespaces.