simstudioai Sim Helm Chart — Operations Skill
This skill helps an agent deploy and operate the Sim Helm chart at helm/sim/ in the simstudioai/sim repository. Use it when the user is installing, upgrading, troubleshooting, or authoring values for the Sim chart.
The skill is diagnostic-first: capture context, classify the situation, load only the references that apply, then act. Do not dump the README at the user. Do not invent values that are not in their current state.
Workflow — follow in order
1. Capture context
Before recommending anything, ask (or infer from the conversation) all of these. Never skip this step. A wrong assumption here corrupts every downstream step.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Cluster: EKS / GKE / AKS / OpenShift / kind / other? | Storage class, ingress class, identity provider differ |
Secret strategy: inline --set, pre-existing K8s Secret, or External Secrets Operator (ESO)? |
The chart has three distinct code paths |
| Postgres: chart-bundled, or external (RDS / Cloud SQL / Azure DB)? | Different value blocks (postgresql.* vs externalDatabase.*) |
| Public-facing? Ingress class? TLS? | ingress.enabled, ingress.className, cert-manager wiring |
| HA? (target replicas) | Drives autoscaling.enabled, app.replicaCount, PDB activation |
| Existing values.yaml the user is editing? | Always read it before proposing a diff — never write blind |
If the user has a values.yaml, read it. If they don't, ask before writing one.
2. Diagnose
Map the user's request to one of these categories and load the matching reference(s):
| Situation | Reference |
|---|---|
| User wants to install for the first time | references/install-paths.md then references/secrets.md |
| User needs to generate the required secrets | references/secrets.md |
| User asks "what does this value do" / wants to author values.yaml | references/values-model.md |
Pod won't start, error message, CrashLoopBackOff, image pull error, ingress not routing |
references/troubleshooting.md |
| User asks about ESO / Vault / AWS Secrets Manager / Azure Key Vault / GCP Secret Manager | references/install-paths.md (ESO section) |
| User asks "is X production-ready" / autoscaling / network policy / security context | Read the README's "Production checklist" section directly — no separate reference |
Load only what the situation requires. Loading every reference burns tokens and produces vague answers.
3. Propose
When proposing values changes:
- Show the minimal diff against the user's current values.yaml. Don't rewrite the file.
- Name the risk (e.g., "this puts the secret in
helm get valuesoutput — fine for dev, not for prod"). - Name the rollback (e.g., "if this breaks,
helm rollback sim 1reverts"). - Cite the canonical source (
helm/sim/values.yamlline numbers, README section, or this skill's reference file).
4. Validate before applying
Always run these before telling the user to helm install / helm upgrade:
# Schema + value validation
helm lint helm/sim --values <user-values>.yaml
# Render full manifest set to catch template errors
helm template sim helm/sim --values <user-values>.yaml > /tmp/render.yaml
# For upgrades, render against the live release first
helm upgrade --dry-run sim helm/sim --values <user-values>.yaml
If lint or template fails, fix the values — do not work around chart validation. The chart's fail statements exist to catch misconfigurations that would otherwise surface as CrashLoopBackOff at runtime.
5. Deliver
Every recommendation should include:
- The exact command(s) to run
- A one-line summary of what will change
- The success signal (e.g., "
kubectl rollout status deploy/sim-appreturns Ready") - The rollback command if something breaks
Quick reference — the three secret modes
| Mode | When | Code path |
|---|---|---|
Inline (--set) |
Dev / kind / dry-run only. Values leak into helm get values. |
app.env.<KEY>: "..." |
| Pre-existing Secret | GitOps with Sealed Secrets / SOPS, or hand-managed Secrets. Chart references a Secret you create. | app.secrets.existingSecret.enabled: true + .name |
| External Secrets Operator (recommended for prod) | Vault, AWS SM, Azure KV, GCP SM. Chart renders an ExternalSecret that ESO syncs. |
externalSecrets.enabled: true + secretStoreRef + remoteRefs.app.<KEY> |
These modes are mutually exclusive for the app Secret. ESO takes precedence over inline. existingSecret takes precedence over inline. The chart fails template rendering when ESO is enabled and a required key (BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, ENCRYPTION_KEY, INTERNAL_API_SECRET, plus CRON_SECRET when cronjobs are enabled) is neither in app.env nor mapped in remoteRefs.app — see references/install-paths.md.
Quick reference — the four required secrets
| Key | Generate with | Notes |
|---|---|---|
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET |
openssl rand -hex 32 |
Session signing |
ENCRYPTION_KEY |
openssl rand -hex 32 |
App-level encryption |
INTERNAL_API_SECRET |
openssl rand -hex 32 |
Service-to-service auth (app ↔ realtime) |
CRON_SECRET |
openssl rand -hex 32 |
Required iff cronjobs.enabled=true (default true) |
Optional but commonly needed:
| Key | Generate with | Notes |
|---|---|---|
API_ENCRYPTION_KEY |
openssl rand -hex 32 |
Must be exactly 64 hex chars. Required to encrypt user API keys at rest. |
postgresql.auth.password |
openssl rand -base64 24 | tr -d '/+=' |
Only if using chart-bundled Postgres. Must match ^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+$ for DATABASE_URL compatibility. |
See references/secrets.md for storage patterns and rotation guidance.
Rules of engagement
These are non-negotiable. Violating any of these has burned users in the past.
- Never recommend
--setfor production secrets. They land inhelm get valuesand Helm release history. Direct users toexistingSecretor ESO. - Never set
image.tag: latest. The chart defaults toChart.AppVersionfor a reason — reproducible rollouts. If the user pinnedlatest, push back. - Never edit chart templates to work around a
failstatement. The validation exists because a misconfiguration would otherwise surface as a runtime CrashLoopBackOff with cryptic env errors. - Never drop
automountServiceAccountToken: falseunless the workload genuinely needs in-cluster API access (Sim's app/realtime/postgres pods do not). - Never
kubectl delete stswithout--cascade=orphanon a live Postgres. It deletes the pods (PVCs survive, but the database goes down immediately). - Never tell a user "the chart works on your cluster" without
helm lint+helm templateagainst their values. Static reading is not validation. - Always confirm before
helm uninstallin a shared namespace. PVCs survive but other namespace resources may not.
When the user is stuck and you can't diagnose
Get logs from every component in parallel. This single block answers ~80% of "it's broken" questions:
kubectl --namespace <ns> get pods,events --sort-by='.lastTimestamp'
kubectl --namespace <ns> logs deploy/sim-app --tail=200
kubectl --namespace <ns> logs deploy/sim-realtime --tail=200
kubectl --namespace <ns> logs sts/sim-postgresql --tail=200
kubectl --namespace <ns> logs deploy/sim-app -c migrations --tail=200 2>/dev/null
kubectl --namespace <ns> describe pod -l app.kubernetes.io/name=sim
Then map the symptom to references/troubleshooting.md.
What this skill does not cover
- Sim application configuration beyond env vars (provider keys, knowledge base setup, etc.) — that's the Sim app docs at https://docs.sim.ai
- Kubernetes cluster setup (creating an EKS cluster, installing ingress-nginx, etc.) — that's cloud-provider docs
- Authoring new chart templates — that's
helm/sim/templates/_helpers.tpland the chart's own contributor docs - Running Sim outside Kubernetes (Docker Compose, bare-metal) — see the root
README.md
If the user's question falls outside this scope, say so and point them at the right doc.