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Policies

This repository contains Kyverno policies for a wide array of usage on various Kubernetes and ecosystem resources and subjects. For the optimal searching and browsing experience, please see Usage and Documentation. For guidance on how you can contribute your own, please see Contribution. To request a Kyverno policy be created which doesn't exist, please see Policy Requests.

Policy samples use the CEL-based policies.kyverno.io/v1 API: ValidatingPolicy, MutatingPolicy, GeneratingPolicy, DeletingPolicy, and ImageValidatingPolicy. They require Kyverno 1.17 or later; individual policies may have additional requirements. Legacy ClusterPolicy, Policy, ClusterCleanupPolicy, and CleanupPolicy samples have been removed, including legacy policies that used CEL validation expressions. Test resources and third-party Kubernetes APIs are not policy samples and retain their own API versions.

The migration audit records every removed sample, its immutable source revision, replacement candidates, and any behavioral gaps. A partial replacement is not considered equivalent. See kyverno/kyverno#17771 for the complete missing-policy checklist and per-sample remediation details.

Usage and Documentation

See https://kyverno.io/policies/ for a list of all the policies represented here in a simplified list with easy filtering abilities.

Contribution

Anyone and everyone is welcome to write and contribute Kyverno policies! We have standardized on several practices to ensure these policies are effective, descriptive, and assist in easy location on the website. Please follow these guidelines when contributing or modifying a policy.

• As a CNCF project, Kyverno requires all contributors to abide by the DCO guidelines published here. This entails signing off on all git commits.

• Use the Kyverno annotations to mark your policy with descriptive metadata. This is not only important to explain your policy, but to allow the filtering logic on the policies page to work effectively.

• Name your policy something descriptive which matches its function. Either dashes or underscores are permitted.

• Provide test resources (where possible) which allow your policy to be validated using the Kyverno CLI. See an example of a complete policy, resource, and test here. If unfamiliar with the Kyverno CLI and its test ability, please see the documentation here.

• For validating policies, please set spec.validationActions: [Audit] so that should a user download and apply the policy without having a yet full understanding of Kyverno, it will not cause unintended harm to their environment by blocking resources.

• Use CEL expressions in the fields supported by each policy type. YAML block scalars (>- or |) are useful for expressions containing quotes or multiple lines; legacy JMESPath template expressions are not interchangeable with CEL.

• Since Kyverno policies are made available on Artifact Hub, each new policy requires a separate metadata file. Create the artifacthub-pkg.yml file in the same directory as your policy. See the Artifact Hub section below for more details on its contents.

• A dedicated folder must be created for each policy.

• The folder must be named the same as the policy.

Once your policy is written within these guidelines and tested, please open a standard PR against the main branch of kyverno/policies. In order for a policy to make it to the website's policies page, it must first be committed to the main branch in this repo. Following that, an administrator will render these policies to produce Markdown files in a second PR. You do not need to worry about this process, however.

The following ValidatingPolicy illustrates the API, annotations, resource matching, and a CEL validation. It audits Pods that do not have an app label. Consult the other samples for the fields supported by each policy type.

apiVersion: policies.kyverno.io/v1
kind: ValidatingPolicy
metadata:
  name: require-app-label
  annotations:
    policies.kyverno.io/title: Require App Label
    policies.kyverno.io/category: Best Practices
    policies.kyverno.io/severity: medium
    policies.kyverno.io/minversion: 1.17.0
    kyverno.io/kubernetes-version: "1.30+"
    policies.kyverno.io/subject: Pod
    policies.kyverno.io/description: >-
      Pods must have an app label identifying their application.
spec:
  validationActions: [Audit]
  evaluation:
    background:
      enabled: true
  matchConstraints:
    resourceRules:
    - apiGroups: [""]
      apiVersions: ["v1"]
      operations: ["CREATE", "UPDATE"]
      resources: ["pods"]
  validations:
  - expression: "has(object.metadata.labels) && 'app' in object.metadata.labels"
    message: "An app label is required."

Pull request automation

PR automation uses the shared action maintained in kyverno/kyverno. Path labeling, hourly readiness checks, and daily stale handling initially run in preview mode. They log proposed changes without modifying PRs.

Once enabled, path labels identify CEL policy types and test/documentation changes. Readiness checks distinguish failing DCO/CI, merge conflicts, and review threads awaiting an author response from PRs that are ready-for-review. Readiness is not merge approval. Pending checks and workflows awaiting maintainer approval do not make a PR ready.

PRs needing author action become stale after 7 days without a new commit and may close after 14 days, but only after at least 7 days of warning. A new commit resets the cycle; comments alone do not. Ready PRs receive a reviewer reminder after 7 days instead of being closed. PRs idle for 30 days or more (backlog_days) get no reviewer reminder or reviewer ping in stale warnings; only the author is notified. Drafts and Dependabot PRs are excluded. The labels no-stale, hold, hold-redesign, blocked, and wip exempt PRs from stale handling and reviewer reminders. If no reviewer or assignee is available, reminders go to @kyverno/policies-maintainers.

Maintainers should first run Actions > Sync labels with dry_run disabled to provision label metadata, including lifecycle labels. Path labels are applied only by pull_request_target events (opened, reopened, synchronize), so existing PRs pick them up on their next push; a manual PR Labeler run with dry_run disabled refreshes only merge-conflicts labels. Review readiness previews in Actions > PR lifecycle and run it manually with dry_run disabled. After reviewing the results, replace the corresponding job's dry-run expression with "false" to enable automatic operation. Enable the stale job separately only after reviewing the backlog and exemptions. Definitions live in .github/pr-management.json, .github/pr-readiness-checks.yml, and .github/labels.yml. Keep shared-action updates pinned to a reviewed commit SHA.

Artifact Hub

Add an artifacthub-pkg.yml metadata file to the folder. See an example metadata file for Kyverno policies below and customize per the comments.

---
name: backup-all-volumes # The name of the package (only alphanum, no spaces, dashes allowed)
version: 1.0.0 # Version of the policy
displayName: Backup All Volumes  # Display name of the policy
createdAt: "2023-03-29T00:00:00.000Z" # The date this package was created (RFC3339 layout)
# The description value should be taken from the relevant annotation policies.kyverno.io/description
description: >-
      In order for Velero to backup volumes in a Pod using an opt-in approach, it
      requires an annotation on the Pod called `backup.velero.io/backup-volumes` with the
      value being a comma-separated list of the volumes mounted to that Pod. This policy
      automatically annotates Pods (and Pod controllers) which refer to a PVC so that
      all volumes are listed in the aforementioned annotation if a Namespace with the label
      `velero-backup-pvc=true`.
install: |- # The installation instructions for the package
    ```shell
    kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kyverno/policies/main/velero-mpol/backup-all-volumes/backup-all-volumes.yaml
    ```   
keywords: # Keywords should always have "kyverno" and whatever the value of the policies.kyverno.io/category annotation. 
  - velero
  - kyverno
readme: | # readme should be same as policies.kyverno.io/description annotation plus the last sentence as a static value.
  In order for Velero to backup volumes in a Pod using an opt-in approach, it
  requires an annotation on the Pod called `backup.velero.io/backup-volumes` with the
  value being a comma-separated list of the volumes mounted to that Pod. This policy
  automatically annotates Pods (and Pod controllers) which refer to a PVC so that
  all volumes are listed in the aforementioned annotation if a Namespace with the label
  `velero-backup-pvc=true`.

  Refer to the documentation for more details on Kyverno annotations: https://artifacthub.io/docs/topics/annotations/kyverno/
annotations: # See the annotations guide on Artifact Hub here: https://artifacthub.io/docs/topics/annotations/kyverno/
  kyverno/category: "Velero"
  kyverno/kubernetesVersion: "1.25"
  kyverno/subject: "Pod, Annotation"
digest: 72ebf5e9553ce341a54de68014a72a3d6e5603e9314dcf61c7e80f236f1d7106 # The SHA256 hash String that uniquely identifies this package version

Policy Requests

If you're not yet comfortable with Kyverno and would like to see a policy that may not presently exist, or if you're having trouble crafting that perfect policy, a couple resources exist. The most expedient way to get help may be to post on Kyverno Slack. Kyverno has a rich and active community with its members and maintainers ready to assist. You may also open an issue to request a certain policy be created to satisfy your needs. If going this route, do keep a few things in mind.

• Clearly explain in detail your use case for why you need a policy which isn't present on the policies page.

• Explain what you want this policy to do and on what resources.

• If applicable, explain what other policies and/or steps you have taken yourself that have been unsuccessful.

• Be responsive to the GitHub issue if further follow-up is required by the contributors or maintainers.

Having this information up front will assist others in crafting a policy to meet your needs.