🧰 Cluster Tools Without a Dev Setup

Plenty of people come to LaraKube CLI for the Cluster Tools — self-hosted chat, a wiki, single sign-on, a git forge, dashboards — and never intend to build an app with it. If that's you, most of the local development setup does not apply.

You do not need OrbStack, Docker Desktop or Podman

A container runtime exists to build and run your own apps on your machine. Cluster Tools are installed with plain kubectl apply against a cluster — nothing is built locally, so there is nothing for a container runtime to do. See Cluster Tools vs your apps.

What you actually need

LaraKube CLI	The larakube binary — see Installation
kubectl	Every cluster command shells out to it. larakube setup installs it.
A cluster	Either one you provision with larakube cloud:create, or one you already have

That's the whole list. You also don't need a .larakube.json project — Cluster Tools are cluster-scoped, and the registry that tracks them lives in the cluster itself.

1. Install the CLI

curl -fsSL https://cli.larakube.app/install.sh | bash

2. Set up this machine

larakube setup

Choose Cluster Tools and remote clusters. This installs kubectl, offers OpenTofu (needed only if you want cloud:create to provision a server for you), and skips every local-development step — no container runtime, no local k3s, no dnsmasq, no local ingress controller.

If a container runtime isn't running, this is already the default answer. To pick it without being asked — in a script, say:

larakube setup --profile=remote

3. Get a cluster

Option A — let LaraKube CLI provision one

larakube cloud:create production

Pick a provider and a size, and you get a hardened single server running k3s, or a managed Kubernetes cluster. See Provisioning with cloud:create.

Option B — bring your own

Any cluster your kubectl can already reach works. Point the tool commands at its context:

kubectl config get-contexts
larakube sso:init production --context=my-existing-cluster

4. Install tools

Every Cluster Tool follows one shape:

larakube <tool>:init <environment>

Single sign-on first, so everything afterwards can use it:

larakube sso:init production
larakube chat:init production
larakube notes:init production
larakube git:init production

Each one arrives with HTTPS, DNS and a login already wired up. larakube tool:list production shows what's installed and what's available.

Provider CLIs

cloud:create prompts for what it needs, but you can install a provider's CLI ahead of time:

larakube setup --tools=gcloud       # Google Cloud
larakube setup --tools=aws          # Amazon Web Services
larakube setup --tools=hcloud       # Hetzner Cloud

macOS without Homebrew

kubectl and OpenTofu install fine without it — both ship official static builds that LaraKube CLI fetches directly. The Google Cloud SDK additionally needs Python 3.10 or newer; macOS ships 3.9 with the Xcode Command Line Tools, so LaraKube CLI checks for a supported interpreter first and installs one through Homebrew when it can. Without Homebrew, install Python from python.org and retry.

When you do want a dev setup

If you later want to build and deploy your own apps alongside these tools, run larakube setup again and choose Local development. That path needs a container runtime — see the macOS, Linux and Windows pages.