Introducing Rig.dev: An open-source application platform for Kubernetes

Kubernetes is a bitter pill to swallow for most application developers. Here's some background on how we came to spend most of our waking hours on trying to diminish the complexity, our opinion on the biggest problem of Kubernetes, and our take on how to solve it with an opinionated approach and carefully chosen abstractions.

Rig.dev at a glance

Rig.dev offers an open-source application platform for Kubernetes. We empower developers with our developer-friendly deployment engine that simplifies the process of rolling out, managing, debugging, and scaling applications on Kubernetes.

Born out of frustrations

We come from various backgrounds but have all seen the immense pain of scaling applications. We have built internal developer platforms, Kubernetes operators at scale, and even a Kubernetes alternative. Through those journeys, we've seen how Kubernetes often suffers from being misunderstood and mishandled in how developers are exposed to it, which 10 out of 10 times slows development teams by causing unnecessary complexity.

We've taken all of the learnings, especially the frustrations from this, and turned it into Rig.dev, where we believe we are on a path to solve most of the frustration you get from building, and especially scaling, applications on Kubernetes in large production environments.

Developers struggle to work with Kubernetes

Developers interact with Kubernetes in one of two ways: either they are exposed to Kubernetes themselves either natively through something like Helm and Terraform, or they are working with an abstraction layer that takes control of the entire cluster, leaving no room to go out of the box without fragile external dependencies. While the former gives flexibility for complex solutions, it enforces a high learning curve with no abstractions. The latter, on the other hand, removes the flexibility that is often needed when scaling or building complex solutions.

Additionally, developers are left with an environment where local development is a secondary consideration. Local reproducibility, fast development cycles, and a local setup that mimics production is nothing but a dream at most companies.

Both issues make Kubernetes a technology that leaves developers with mixed feelings - it's a fantastic technology when it all just works, but an overwhelming burden when you have to go one step deeper.

Introducing Rig.dev

At Rig.dev, we are passionate about fixing these issues. We want developers to shine in this environment and feel empowered by what Kubernetes has to offer.

We believe we have assembled the right team to build out true abstractions that serve the developers while also respecting DevOps and their role in defining the infrastructure. Abstractions like Capsules, Rollouts and Builds, that are intuitive for developers and lower the friction both at day one, but also through scaling the team and the product.

We want companies to be able to pick Rig.dev, without having to reconsider which cluster provider to use or have to start off with a migration; it can live in and alongside your existing platform tooling. Building the right infrastructure is a hard thing to do, and building a product that puts no restrictions on your solution while guiding novices to use the platform "correctly", is, in our opinion, the best offering we can bring.

Developers are always at the center of everything we do, and we are only satisfied with Rig.dev once developers building applications for Kubernetes are just as spoiled as Frontend developers are with technologies such as Vercel and Netlify.

So, what exactly do we leave you with?

As with any developer-focused product, it's about providing the right tools to do the job. Rig bundles with a

→ A modern take on developer-friendly abstractions; our Capsules & Rollouts.

→ A slick Dashboard that easily lets you work with your Application resources

→ A CLI where all operations are available for the developers that are more comfortable with the terminal.

→ A solid foundation from which we can build and continuously ship new features and improvements

→ A team that are eager to learn how we can make the product even better, either directly or through our community

Get involved & show your support

We're overwhelmed by all the support we've received so far — from our investors, network, and the developers we've talked with — and can't wait to see what the next generation of cloud-native developers and companies will achieve with Rig.dev.

We would appreciate it if you support us with a star on GitHub and help spread the word about Rig.dev to show your support!

We'll actively seek feedback, bug reports, and feature requests in our Rig.dev Community – so please join us here!