chaos

Design, run, and debug Chaos Engineering experiments on Kubernetes.

Interactive Wizard (fires when no arguments are provided)

When invoked with no arguments, ask before proceeding:

Q1 — Mode?

What do you need?
  1. install    — install Litmus Chaos or Chaos Mesh via Helm
  2. experiment — design a fault injection experiment
  3. schedule   — wrap an experiment in a recurring schedule
  4. gameday    — run a structured GameDay experiment
  5. debug      — diagnose a failed or stuck experiment
  6. report     — summarize results after an experiment completes

Enter 1–6 or mode name:

After collecting the mode, ask one follow-up:

• install: Which tool? Litmus Chaos (recommended default) or Chaos Mesh (network/IO faults)?
• experiment: Describe the workload to target — name, namespace, fault type (pod-delete / network-loss / cpu-stress / node-drain):
• schedule: Provide the experiment YAML or describe the experiment to wrap in a schedule:
• gameday: State the steady-state hypothesis — what metric or probe proves the system is healthy?
• debug: Describe the symptom or paste the ChaosEngine/ChaosResult status:
• report: Paste the ChaosResult output or describe the experiment that ran:

Then proceed into the relevant mode below.

Mode: install

Install Litmus Chaos or Chaos Mesh via Helm.

Steps:

1. Choose the tool:
   • Litmus Chaos: CNCF graduated, ChaosCenter UI, broad experiment library → recommended default
   • Chaos Mesh: CNCF incubating, fine-grained NetworkChaos, IOChaos → choose for network partitions or I/O faults
2. Install Litmus Chaos:

   helm repo add litmuschaos https://litmuschaos.github.io/litmus-helm/
   helm repo update
   helm upgrade --install chaos litmuschaos/litmus \
     --namespace litmus \
     --create-namespace \
     --version 3.9.0 \
     -f examples/chaos/litmus-install-values.yaml

3. Install Chaos Mesh:

   helm repo add chaos-mesh https://charts.chaos-mesh.org
   helm repo update
   helm upgrade --install chaos-mesh chaos-mesh/chaos-mesh \
     --namespace chaos-mesh \
     --create-namespace \
     --version 2.7.0 \
     -f examples/chaos/chaos-mesh-install-values.yaml

4. Verify:

   # Litmus
   kubectl get pods -n litmus
   # Chaos Mesh
   kubectl get pods -n chaos-mesh

   Expected: all pods Running

Mode: experiment

Generate a fault experiment from a description.

Steps:

1. Identify: tool (Litmus/Mesh), fault class (pod/network/stress/node), target workload name and namespace
2. Require steady-state hypothesis before generating the experiment:
   • HTTP probe: URL + expected response code
   • Prometheus probe: PromQL query that returns 1 (healthy) or 0 (degraded)
3. Generate the experiment CRD with:
   • Namespace-scoped label selector
   • duration or TOTAL_CHAOS_DURATION set (default 60s)
   • Probe section referencing the steady-state hypothesis
   • PODS_AFFECTED_PERC: "50" for initial runs (safe); increase to 100% for full resilience test
4. Output: experiment YAML + kubectl apply command + expected ChaosResult verdict

See examples/chaos/pod-delete-experiment.yaml and examples/chaos/network-loss-experiment.yaml for complete examples.

Mode: schedule

Wrap an experiment in a recurring schedule.

Steps:

1. Litmus ChaosSchedule:

   apiVersion: litmuschaos.io/v1alpha1
   kind: ChaosSchedule
   metadata:
     name: pod-delete-weekly
     namespace: my-namespace
   spec:
     schedule:
       repeat:
         properties:
           minChaosInterval: "168h"
     engineTemplateSpec:
       appinfo:
         appns: my-namespace
         applabel: "app=my-service"
         appkind: deployment
       chaosServiceAccount: litmus-admin
       experiments:
       - name: pod-delete
         spec:
           components:
             env:
             - name: TOTAL_CHAOS_DURATION
               value: "60"

2. Chaos Mesh Schedule:

   apiVersion: chaos-mesh.org/v1alpha1
   kind: Schedule
   metadata:
     name: network-loss-weekly
     namespace: my-namespace
   spec:
     schedule: "0 2 * * 1"
     type: NetworkChaos
     historyLimit: 5
     concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
     networkChaosTemplate:
       spec:
         action: loss
         mode: all
         selector:
           namespaces: [my-namespace]
           labelSelectors:
             app: my-service
         loss:
           loss: "20"
         duration: 60s

3. Recommend staging only — never schedule experiments in production without a change window

Mode: gameday

Run a structured GameDay experiment.

Steps:

1. Define steady-state hypothesis:
   • What metric or probe proves the system is healthy?
   • What is the acceptable degradation threshold?
2. Scope the blast radius:
   • Namespace: <namespace>
   • Label selector: app=<service-name>
   • Max affected pods: 50% for first run
3. Inject the fault (reference experiment from experiment mode output)
4. Observe:
   • Watch probe results in ChaosResult
   • Check Prometheus/Grafana for error rate, latency, saturation
   • Note time-to-detect if an alert fired
5. Record the verdict:
   • PASS: steady-state probe held throughout, service recovered within SLO
   • FAIL: probe failed, alert did not fire within expected window, or recovery exceeded SLO
6. Output DORA impact summary:
   • Change failure rate delta: did this fault class cause failures in past deploys?
   • MTTR observed: time from fault injection to steady-state restoration
   • Recommendation: improve circuit breaker / HPA config / replica count / PDB

Mode: debug

If you need deeper context on troubleshooting, load references/chaos.md.

Diagnose a failed or stuck experiment.

Checklist:

1. Is the controller running?

   kubectl get pods -n litmus          # Litmus
   kubectl get pods -n chaos-mesh      # Chaos Mesh

2. Is the ChaosEngine/fault stuck?

   kubectl describe chaosengine <name> -n <namespace>   # Litmus
   kubectl describe podchaos <name> -n <namespace>       # Chaos Mesh

3. Check the ChaosResult (Litmus only):

   kubectl get chaosresult -n <namespace>
   kubectl describe chaosresult <engine-name>-<experiment-name> -n <namespace>

   Look for status.experimentStatus.verdict and probe failure messages.

4. Common causes:

   Symptom	Cause	Fix
   Stuck Initialized	Missing RBAC	kubectl get clusterrolebinding -l app.kubernetes.io/component=operator
   No pods targeted	Label selector wrong	kubectl get pods -n <ns> -l <selector>
   Probe failing	Wrong URL or PromQL	Test probe URL with curl from inside the namespace
   Experiment won't end	Missing duration	Add duration: 60s (Chaos Mesh) or TOTAL_CHAOS_DURATION (Litmus)
   Controller crashlooping	Version mismatch	Re-install matching chart version

Mode: report

Summarize experiment results after completion.

Steps:

1. Collect ChaosResult:

   kubectl get chaosresult -n <namespace> -o yaml

2. Report:
   • Fault injected: type, duration, affected pods
   • Steady-state probe: pass/fail timeline (from ChaosResult probe status)
   • Recovery time: time from fault injection (status.experimentStatus.passedRuns) to probe passing again
   • Verdict: PASS / FAIL with reason
3. DORA impact:
   • Was error rate SLO breached? → contributes to change failure rate
   • Recovery time → MTTR observation
   • Feed into DORA benchmark mode: /platform-skills:dora benchmark

After completing this task, log errors and learnings via /platform-skills:self-improve log.