# grafana/tanka

Flexible, reusable and concise configuration for Kubernetes

Repository: https://github.com/grafana/tanka
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/tanka
Homepage: https://tanka.dev
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: jsonnet, kubernetes, configuration, reusable, flexible, ksonnet, json, noyaml
Last push: 2026-08-26T17:05:12+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 97/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 93, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2604, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 48, "gap_med": 15.5, "n_releases_24m": 29}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2682, forks 191 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:10.065963+00:00)

## What it is
Grafana Tanka is a CLI tool (tk) that uses the Jsonnet data templating language to write clean, reusable, and concise Kubernetes configurations as an alternative to raw YAML. It supports diffing, applying to clusters, and reproducible Helm chart vendoring, and is used in production by Grafana Cloud.

## Use cases
- replace yaml with jsonnet for kubernetes manifests
- write reusable kubernetes configuration libraries
- preview k8s changes before applying with diff
- vendor and modify helm charts reproducibly
- manage kubernetes deployments without yaml boilerplate
- migrate from deprecated ksonnet

## When to choose
- you want programmatic abstraction and reuse in kubernetes configs instead of yaml templating
- you are a ksonnet user seeking a drop-in replacement
- you need reliable diffs of cluster changes before applying
- you want to compose helm charts into jsonnet workflows

## When to avoid
- your team prefers helm or kustomize and yaml-based workflows
- you don't want to learn the jsonnet language
- you need a gui or dashboard-style kubernetes configuration tool

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: configuration-management, deployment, cli, infrastructure-as-code
- domain: infrastructure-as-code, developer-tools
- platform: cli, go
- tags: jsonnet, kubernetes, ksonnet-successor, helm, yaml-alternative, jsonnet-bundler, devops, containers, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- grafana/tanka (main) score 97

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:10.065963+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:17:54.369414+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/grafana/tanka (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:10.065963+00:00, sha f6232f9d6f78)
  - homepage: https://tanka.dev (fetched 2026-08-29T10:00:06.790348+00:00, sha 827611965eb7)
  - site_page: https://tanka.dev/install (fetched 2026-08-29T10:00:06.799212+00:00, sha a287949f7c08)
  - site_page: https://tanka.dev/libraries/install-publish (fetched 2026-08-29T10:00:06.801103+00:00, sha 9e9992549d0b)
  - site_page: https://tanka.dev/faq (fetched 2026-08-29T10:00:06.802655+00:00, sha 1e57657077a7)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.