<h2 id="table-of-contents">Table of contents</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="#the-goal">The goal</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-journalist-agent">The journalist agent</a></li>
<li><a href="#how-the-pieces-connect">How the pieces connect</a></li>
<li><a href="#controller-and-runtime">Controller and runtime</a></li>
<li><a href="#agenttask-crd">AgentTask CRD</a></li>
<li><a href="#openrouter-for-api-auth">OpenRouter for API auth</a></li>
<li><a href="#permissions-with-allowedtools">Permissions with allowedTools</a></li>
<li><a href="#webhook-trigger-on-demand">Webhook: trigger on demand</a></li>
<li><a href="#helm-chart-and-deployment">Helm chart and deployment</a></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="the-goal">The goal</h2>
<p>I want AI agents that run autonomously on a cron schedule or in
response to events, managed by Kubernetes.</p>
<p>The demo task is a daily AI news digest. Every morning at 8am,
an agent searches the web for yesterday's AI news, writes a
digest to the wiki, and commits. It's also triggerable on demand
via webhook.</p>
<p>K8s handles the scheduling. A custom controller watches a CRD
and creates Jobs. The agent runs in a container, writes to a
shared volume, and the controller tracks the result. Agents
commit locally but don't push. I review and push manually.</p>
<h2 id="the-journalist-agent">The journalist agent</h2>
<p>I wrote a new Claude Code agent for this:
<a href="https://github.com/kylep/multi/blob/main/.claude/agents/journalist.md">journalist</a>.
Sonnet, not Opus. This runs daily, and the task is search and
summarize. Sonnet is cheaper and good enough.</p>
<p>The agent searches for yesterday's AI news, writes a digest to
<code>wiki/journal/YYYY-MM-DD/ai-news.md</code> with source URLs for every
item, and commits. It determines the date itself via <code>date</code>.</p>
<p>Early versions used <code>WebSearch</code>, which burned through context
with HTML scraping. I built a small
<a href="/wiki/custom-tools/google-news-mcp.html">GNews MCP server</a>
that wraps the GNews API. Structured JSON responses, fewer
tokens. The agent runs six parallel queries (<code>OpenAI</code>,
<code>Anthropic</code>, <code>Google AI</code>, <code>NVIDIA AI</code>, <code>AI startup</code>, plus
tech headlines) and deduplicates the results.</p>
<p>I also wrote a
<a href="/wiki/custom-tools/discord-mcp.html">Discord MCP server</a>
so the agent posts its digest to the <code>#news</code> channel in my
Discord bot server.</p>
<h2 id="how-the-pieces-connect">How the pieces connect</h2>
<pre class="mermaid">
graph TD
    AT[daily-ai-news AgentTask] -->|watched by| CTRL[Controller]
    CTRL -->|8am cron| JOB[K8s Job]
    JOB -->|init| GIT[git fetch + reset]
    GIT -->|then| AGENT[Journalist Agent]
    AGENT -->|writes| WIKI[wiki/journal/YYYY-MM-DD/ai-news.md]
    AGENT -->|commits| PVC[Shared PVC]
    AGENT -->|posts via MCP| DISCORD[Discord #news]
    WH[Webhook :8080] -->|creates| AT
</pre>
<p>The controller is a Go binary running as a Deployment. It watches
<code>AgentTask</code> custom resources in the <code>ai-agents</code> namespace.</p>
<p>Each Job has two containers:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Init container</strong> (<code>alpine/git</code>): fetches the repo, resets
to the configured branch, then <code>chown</code>s the workspace to
uid 1000 (the agent user).</li>
<li><strong>Main container</strong> (<code>ai-agent-runtime</code>): writes MCP config,
then runs <code>claude --mcp-config ... --agent journalist -p "..." --allowedTools ...</code></li>
</ol>
<h2 id="controller-and-runtime">Controller and runtime</h2>
<p>The
<a href="https://github.com/kylep/multi/tree/main/infra/ai-agents/agent-controller/pkg/controller">controller</a>
is a Go reconcile loop that lists all AgentTasks every 30 seconds.
For scheduled tasks, it compares <code>lastRunTime</code> against the cron
expression and creates a Job when due. For manual and webhook
tasks, it creates a Job immediately when phase is <code>Pending</code>.</p>
<p>The runtime image is an Alpine container with Claude Code and
OpenCode baked in (<code>infra/ai-agents/ai-agent-runtime/Dockerfile</code>). Runs
as uid 1000.</p>
<h2 id="agenttask-crd">AgentTask CRD</h2>
<p>The custom resource definition gives <code>kubectl get agenttasks</code>
for free. Here's the daily news task:</p>
<pre><code class="language-yaml">apiVersion: agents.kyle.pericak.com/v1alpha1
kind: AgentTask
metadata:
  name: daily-ai-news
spec:
  agent: journalist
  runtime: claude
  prompt: >-
    Search for yesterday's most notable AI news...
  schedule: "0 8 * * *"
  trigger: scheduled
  readOnly: false
  allowedTools: >-
    WebSearch,WebFetch,Read,Glob,Grep,Write,
    Bash(mkdir *),Bash(git add *),
    Bash(git commit *),Bash(date *)
</code></pre>
<p>The controller splits <code>allowedTools</code> on commas and passes each
one as a separate <code>--allowedTools</code> flag to Claude Code. This is
how you run Claude Code autonomously without
<code>--dangerously-skip-permissions</code>.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Field</th>
<th>Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>agent</code></td>
<td>Name from <code>.claude/agents/</code></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><code>runtime</code></td>
<td><code>claude</code> or <code>opencode</code></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><code>prompt</code></td>
<td>The <code>-p</code> argument</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><code>schedule</code></td>
<td>Cron expression (empty = one-shot)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><code>trigger</code></td>
<td><code>manual</code>, <code>scheduled</code>, or <code>webhook</code></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><code>readOnly</code></td>
<td>Whether this agent modifies the repo</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><code>allowedTools</code></td>
<td>Comma-separated tool permissions</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2 id="openrouter-for-api-auth">OpenRouter for API auth</h2>
<p>Claude Code normally uses <code>ANTHROPIC_API_KEY</code> to talk to
Anthropic's API directly. In a container, I route it through
<a href="/openrouter-ai-tools.html">OpenRouter</a> instead. One API key
for all model providers, unified billing.</p>
<p>The Helm chart's Secret injects these env vars into every
agent container:</p>
<pre><code class="language-yaml">ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL: https://openrouter.ai/api
ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN: &#x3C;openrouter-key>
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ""
CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC: "1"
</code></pre>
<p><code>ANTHROPIC_API_KEY</code> must be empty or Claude Code tries to use
it and the auth conflicts.</p>
<h2 id="permissions-with-allowedtools">Permissions with allowedTools</h2>
<p>Claude Code prompts for permission before using tools. In a
container with no TTY, it just hangs. The fix is
<code>--allowedTools</code>, which auto-approves specific tools.</p>
<p>Each tool needs its own flag. Comma-separated doesn't work:</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash"># wrong
claude -p "..." --allowedTools "WebSearch,Write,Read"

# right
claude -p "..." \
  --allowedTools "WebSearch" \
  --allowedTools "Write" \
  --allowedTools "Read"
</code></pre>
<p>Tools with specifiers use parentheses for scoping:</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">--allowedTools 'Bash(mkdir *)'    # only mkdir
--allowedTools 'Bash(git add *)'  # only git add
--allowedTools 'Write'            # any file
</code></pre>
<p>I tried scoping Write to a specific path with
<code>Write(apps/blog/blog/markdown/wiki/journal/**)</code> but it didn't
match inside the container. The pattern works locally but fails
when the working directory is <code>/workspace/repo</code>. Unrestricted
<code>Write</code> works. The agent definition and Bash scoping still
constrain what gets written.</p>
<h2 id="webhook-trigger-on-demand">Webhook: trigger on demand</h2>
<p>The controller exposes <code>:8080/webhook</code> for on-demand runs.
Requires a bearer token via <code>AI_WEBHOOK_TOKEN</code> env var (skipped
if empty for local dev):</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/webhook \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AI_WEBHOOK_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "agent": "journalist",
    "prompt": "Search for today AI news...",
    "allowedTools": "WebSearch,WebFetch,Read,Write,..."
  }'
</code></pre>
<p>The handler creates an AgentTask CR with the allowedTools, and
the reconcile loop picks it up.</p>
<h2 id="helm-chart-and-deployment">Helm chart and deployment</h2>
<p>The
<a href="https://github.com/kylep/multi/tree/main/infra/ai-agents/agent-controller/helm">Helm chart</a>
packages everything: CRD, controller Deployment, ServiceAccount,
RBAC, Secrets, and PVC. hostPath volume, single node.</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">helm install agent-controller ./helm \
  -n ai-agents --create-namespace \
  -f values-override.yaml
</code></pre>
<p>The OpenRouter key has special characters that <code>--set</code> mangles.
Use a values file instead:</p>
<pre><code class="language-yaml">secrets:
  openrouterApiKey: "&#x3C;your-openrouter-key>"
  discordBotToken: "&#x3C;your-discord-bot-token>"
  discordGuildId: "&#x3C;your-guild-id>"
repo:
  branch: kyle/blog-k8s-autonomous-agents-mvp
</code></pre>


Kyle Pericak

My First Cron/Event-Triggered AI Agents on K8s