Install on a cluster

OAP installs onto any Kubernetes cluster. Which cluster kind you install as decides the install profile — the memory backend, the SpiceDB datastore, the artifact store, and how the platform is reached.

Choosing a cluster kind

Pass --cluster-kind (or --local as shorthand for the local dev kind). Omit it and OAP detects the kind from the cluster's node providers, falling back to a sensible default — the local and desktop kinds are opt-in only and never auto-detected, so you can't accidentally land a dev profile on production infrastructure.

STARTERS="user:$(oap identity canonical-id you@example.com)"
oap install --local --builder-starters "$STARTERS"             # local dev cluster (kind / Docker Desktop)
oap install --cluster-kind gke --builder-starters "$STARTERS"  # a managed GKE cluster
oap install --builder-starters "$STARTERS"                     # detect from the cluster, default if unknown

oap install needs either --builder-starters (who may start Agent Builder) or --without-builder; see Agent Builder.

The profiles

Cluster kind	Memory	SpiceDB datastore	Images	For
`local`	SQLite	in-memory (ephemeral)	local `:dev`	a laptop dev cluster
`desktop`	SQLite	in-memory	local	the macOS app
`default`	Postgres	Postgres (durable)	registry	on-prem / bare-metal / kind
`gke` · `eks` · `aks`	Postgres	Postgres	registry	managed cloud, durable

GKE can provision a bucket for artifacts; EKS and AKS take one you supply with --artifact-store-url. The managed-cloud kinds require an external hostname (so the platform is reachable and TLS terminates correctly); the local and desktop kinds keep everything on a local volume. The install validates the kind against the cluster before it changes anything, so a wrong kind fails fast rather than half-installing.