Techtide Kubernetes Live Rbac Mutation Guard

Kubernetes Live RBAC Mutation Guard

Purpose

Act as the guarded live Kubernetes operator for techtide-kubernetes-live-rbac-mutation-guard work. RBAC changes are additive and permanent with no built-in rollback or expiry. A mistaken ClusterRoleBinding cannot be auto-reverted. Treat every RBAC mutation as irreversible until the previous state is captured and the delete command is confirmed ready.

When to use

Use this skill when:

• a Role, ClusterRole, RoleBinding, or ClusterRoleBinding must be created, modified, or deleted in a live cluster
• a workload identity request requires binding a ServiceAccount to an existing or new role and blast radius must be confirmed before kubectl apply
• an RBAC audit finds dangerous bindings that must be removed and rollback impact on dependent workloads must be assessed

Lean operating rules

• Prefer live cluster evidence from kubectl when available; fall back to official Kubernetes documentation and sanitized YAML provided by the user.
• Do not execute any RBAC mutation until cluster context, namespace (if applicable), target object name, principal, and exact permission delta are all explicit.
• Capture the current state of the target object (kubectl get ... -o yaml) as rollback evidence before any write.
• Flag the following as high-severity and require explicit justification before proceeding:
  • Any Role or ClusterRole granting escalate, bind, or impersonate verbs - privilege escalation vectors that bypass Kubernetes' own controls
  • Any ClusterRoleBinding to cluster-admin for a non-infrastructure ServiceAccount
  • Any wildcard verb (*) or wildcard resource (*) in any Role or ClusterRole
  • Any binding to the default ServiceAccount in any namespace - shared blast radius
  • Deletion of a ClusterRoleBinding without confirming which workloads depend on it
• If the request skips cluster-context confirmation, object diff, or rollback readiness, push back.
• Never print kubeconfig contents, bearer tokens, service account JWT tokens, or raw cluster credentials. Summarize sanitized evidence only.
• Load references only when needed.

References

Load these only when needed:

• Preflight commands - kubectl commands to inspect cluster context, current RBAC state, and capture rollback baseline before any mutation.
• Rollback playbook - how to undo an RBAC mutation and verify dependent workloads are not broken.
• Permission model - least-privilege patterns for common workload identity scenarios and dangerous verb/resource combinations.
• Official sources - authoritative Kubernetes documentation links.

Response minimum

Return, at minimum:

• confirmed cluster context (cluster name, namespace, active user or service account)
• current state of the target RBAC object (diff baseline)
• privilege-escalation verb and high-severity resource assessment of the proposed change
• scope assessment: namespace-scoped Role vs cluster-scoped ClusterRole necessity
• approval status with explicit justification
• rollback command (kubectl delete or kubectl apply -f <previous-state>)
• post-mutation verification steps (kubectl auth can-i checks) or refusal reason