Prepare to deploy

This tutorial walks you through the two setup steps required before deploying NKP:

• creating a GitOps repository where nic can commit app manifests
• creating a .env file with your credentials

Provider-specific credentials and configuration are covered on each provider page.

GitOps repository

NIC uses GitOps: it commits ArgoCD app manifests to a Git repo you own and lets ArgoCD sync them into the cluster. For how this fits into the platform, see NKP architecture.

You'll need:

1. A Git repo on any host reachable from the cluster (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, self-hosted Gitea, etc.).
2. A GitHub personal access token (GIT_TOKEN) scoped to the GitOps repo with Contents: read+write. Go to github.com/settings/tokens?type=beta, choose Only select repositories, pick your GitOps repo, and generate.

Recommended for production

Generate a second token (ARGOCD_GIT_TOKEN) with Contents: read-only for ArgoCD to use inside the cluster. If you skip it, ArgoCD reuses GIT_TOKEN, which gives the cluster write access to your GitOps repo.

Secrets and credentials

nic reads secrets from a .env file in the directory you run nic from (loaded via godotenv).

Ensure .env is in your .gitignore before you commit anything:

.gitignore

.env

Add your GitOps tokens to .env:

GIT_TOKEN=github_pat_...             # read+write, used by nic during deploy
ARGOCD_GIT_TOKEN=github_pat_...      # optional, read-only; used by ArgoCD to pull manifests

Your provider's page lists the provider credentials (cloud keys or profiles) that also belong in this .env.