Helm Best Practices

What problem does it solve?

This Skill standardizes Helm chart development and dependency management, preventing common pitfalls and ensuring consistent, reliable deployments. It guides users through correct workflows, reducing errors and improving chart quality.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Correct Dependency Management: Emphasizes using helm dependency update (NOT build) and integrating with pre-commit checks for robust dependency handling.
• Chart Testing & Debugging: Provides essential commands for templating, dry-runs, and inspecting deployed values to ensure charts behave as expected.
• Structured Best Practices: Guides on optimal chart structure, values organization, and semantic versioning for maintainable charts.
• Use Case: A DevOps engineer is updating a Helm chart's dependencies. This skill reminds them of the correct helm dependency update command, the make check-deps step, and the importance of pre-commit hooks, ensuring a smooth, error-free update process that maintains chart integrity.

Quick Start

Update Helm chart dependencies after modifying Chart.yaml

helm dependency update

Template a chart to check its rendered Kubernetes manifests

helm template my-release ./my-chart

Perform a dry-run install to verify without deploying

helm install my-release ./my-chart --dry-run --debug