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OpenVeda Playbook: Kubernetes

Your guide to contributing to the world's leading container orchestration platform. This is the major leagues.

The Mission: Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It is the operating system for the cloud.
Your Impact: Contributions to Kubernetes have a direct impact on the entire cloud-native ecosystem. The code you write will be used by virtually every major tech company on the planet.
Why it's a Career Supercharger: "Kubernetes Contributor" is one of the most elite and valuable titles you can have on your resume. It signals an extremely high level of technical skill, a deep understanding of distributed systems, and the ability to work in one of the world's most professional and rigorous open-source communities.

Core Language: Go (Golang). The vast majority of Kubernetes is written in Go.
Configuration: YAML. You will work with a lot of YAML files for configuration.
Infrastructure: Docker / containerd for containerization.
Key Tools: GitHub for code, Slack for communication, and a vast ecosystem of custom tools.

Contributing to Kubernetes is a marathon, not a sprint. The learning curve is steep, but the community has an excellent process.

Primary Channel (Slack): The Kubernetes community is massive and lives on Slack.
- Link: Join the Kubernetes Slack
Your First Action: Join the #k8s-new-contributor channel. This is your starting point. Read the pinned messages and introduce yourself.

Official Guide: The community has created an excellent, comprehensive contributor guide.
- Link: The Kubernetes Contributor Guide
OpenVeda Pro-Tip: Do not try to set everything up at once. Your first contribution will likely be to the documentation, which does not require a full Kubernetes cluster to be running on your machine. Start with a documentation fix to learn the workflow.

Official Guide: The workflow is rigorous and involves bots, specific labels, and a clear review process.
- Link: The Contribution Workflow
Key Point: You must sign the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before your first PR can be merged. A bot will guide you through this.

Historical Focus: Kubernetes (under the CNCF) is a major GSoC organization. Projects are highly technical and can range from improving the scheduler, to building new CLI features for kubectl, to enhancing network security policies.
What Mentors Look For: Deep technical understanding and extreme persistence. They want to see that you have a strong grasp of Go and distributed systems concepts. You MUST make several small-to-medium contributions before applying to GSoC to be taken seriously.

Main Repository: github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes
Website & Docs: github.com/kubernetes/website (Perfect for first-timers!)
Community Repo: github.com/kubernetes/community (Contains all the contributor guides).

The Golden Link: The "good first issue" label is the official entry point.
- Link: "good first issue" tag in kubernetes/kubernetes
- Link (Even Better): "good first issue" tag in kubernetes/website - Start here!

Start with the Docs: Repeat: your first contribution should almost certainly be a documentation fix in the kubernetes/website repository. It teaches you the entire complex workflow with a very simple code change.
Join a SIG: The Kubernetes community is organized into Special Interest Groups (SIGs), like sig-network or sig-testing. Find one that interests you, join their meetings, and listen. This is how you learn and network.
The Bot is Your Friend: The Kubernetes GitHub is heavily automated. Read the comments from k8s-ci-robot carefully. It will tell you exactly what you need to do to get your PR merged.

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