Fawkes - Internal Product Delivery Platform
🎓 Learn platform engineering while building a world-class delivery platform
Status: Pre-alpha (v0.3.95, September 2026) — local k3d evaluation works; cloud production is not yet ready. See Known Limitations.
Scope: Fawkes is the core IDP (platform orchestration). It is not the Dojo curriculum (now at uFawkesDojo) and not a CI SaaS — composable stacks (uFawkesObs / Pipe / DevX) cover observability, delivery, and developer experience.
What Makes Fawkes Different?
Fawkes isn't just another Internal Developer Platform—it's a complete Internal Product Delivery Platform that uniquely combines:
🎓 Immersive Dojo Learning
Learn platform engineering by doing, not just reading. Progress through belt levels while building real skills on production-grade infrastructure.
🚀 Complete Product Delivery
Everything teams need: infrastructure, CI/CD, collaboration, project management, observability, and security—all integrated, all open source.
📊 DORA-Driven by Design
DORA metrics are a design goal. The Alpha release targets two of them, deployment frequency and lead time, queryable in Grafana with native PromQL.
🤝 Unified Experience
One platform, one login, one interface. No more context switching between a dozen tools.
🚀 AWS Activate Project
Fawkes is applying for the AWS Activate program to accelerate development and provide free learning resources to the platform engineering community. We're building an AWS-native Internal Delivery Platform that helps organizations achieve Elite DORA performance.
Why AWS?
- Native integration with EKS, RDS, S3, and CloudWatch
- Scalable, secure infrastructure for enterprise workloads
- Cost-effective for startups and growing companies
- Best-in-class Kubernetes support with Amazon EKS
AWS Services Used: EKS, RDS, S3, ALB, CloudWatch, X-Ray, Secrets Manager, IAM, VPC, Certificate Manager
Apply for AWS Activate | AWS Deployment Guide
AWS Activate Application
📊 Cost estimation and business case docs are not yet published — see the archive deployment guide for current AWS notes.
🥋 The Fawkes Dojo: Learn by Doing
Platform engineering skills are hard to acquire by reading docs. The Dojo curriculum — 5 belt levels, 40 hours from novice to platform architect, hands-on labs with auto-graded validation — now lives in its own repo so it can be shared across the whole stack family:
Start Your Dojo Journey →
Fastest way to learn by doing: run one composable Docker stack locally (uFawkesObs for observability, uFawkesPipe for delivery, uFawkesDevX for developer experience — see Quick Start), then work the matching Dojo belt against it.
🚀 A Complete Product Delivery Platform
Unlike infrastructure-only solutions, Fawkes provides everything product teams need:
Infrastructure & Delivery
- Kubernetes Orchestration - Multi-cloud ready (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Infrastructure as Code - Terraform and Crossplane
- CI/CD Pipelines - Tekton (in-cluster) with golden path templates
- GitOps Workflows - ArgoCD for declarative deployments
- Progressive Delivery - Canary, automated rollback via Argo Rollouts
Collaboration & Planning
- Team Chat - Mattermost for real-time collaboration
- Project Management - Focalboard (Notion-like) for sprints and roadmaps
- ChatOps - Deploy and manage from chat
- Platform Notifications - CI/CD, deployments, alerts in chat
Observability & Insights
- DORA Metrics - Automated collection of all 4 key metrics
- Metrics & Dashboards - Prometheus and Grafana
- Distributed Tracing - Jaeger with OpenTelemetry
- Log Aggregation - Loki with OpenTelemetry Collector
- Custom Dashboards - Team-level visibility
Security & Compliance
- 🔒 Security Plane - Comprehensive security framework with SBOM, signing, and policy enforcement
- Security Scanning - SonarQube (SAST), Trivy (containers), Gitleaks (secrets)
- Automated Secrets Detection - Pre-commit hooks and CI/CD pipeline scanning
- Policy Enforcement - Kyverno for Kubernetes policies + OPA/Rego for CI/CD
- SBOM Generation - Syft-based Software Bill of Materials
- Image Signing - Cosign for cryptographic signatures
- Secrets Management - External Secrets Operator + OpenBao
- Zero Trust Architecture - Security-first architecture
Learn more about the Security Plane →
Learning & Growth
- Dojo Learning Environment - Hands-on labs with auto-validation
- Progress Tracking - Visual dashboards of learning journey
- Community Support - Dedicated channels per belt level
- Certification - Recognized credentials for each belt
📊 DORA Metrics: Built-In, Not Bolt-On
Fawkes collects and visualizes the Five Key Metrics (DORA 2025) natively via PromQL — no DevLake ETL required:
| Metric | What It Measures | Fawkes Status |
|---|
| Deployment Frequency | How often you deploy to production | ✅ Native PromQL (ArgoCD sync events) |
| Lead Time for Changes | Time from commit to production | ✅ Native PromQL (Tekton → ArgoCD correlation) |
| Change Failure Rate | % of deployments causing failures | ✅ Native PromQL (ArgoCD health + rollbacks) |
| Time to Restore Service | Time to recover from incidents | ✅ Native PromQL (Alertmanager events) |
| Reliability (5th key) | Service availability meeting SLOs | ✅ Native PromQL (service SLIs) |
DORA capability: Fawkes provides the quality-internal-platform, version-control, and small-batch foundations; per-stack capability mapping lives in ROADMAP.
DORA Metrics Guide →
🎯 Who Is Fawkes For?
Platform Engineering Teams
Build and operate internal platforms with best practices baked in. Spend less time on toil, more on innovation.
DevOps Teams Evolving to Platform Engineering
Make the transition with a comprehensive platform that embodies modern practices.
Engineering Leaders
Improve delivery performance with data-driven insights. Achieve elite DORA metrics.
Platform Engineering Students
Learn by doing with hands-on labs on production-grade infrastructure. Earn recognized certifications.
Organizations Building IDPs
Don't start from scratch. Deploy a production-ready platform and customize to your needs.
⚡ Quick Start
Not sure where to begin? Choose the path that fits your goal:
Fastest start (Path A):
git clone https://github.com/paruff/fawkes.git
cd fawkes
make dev-up # creates k3d cluster + deploys 5 core components
make dev-status # prints service URLs and credentials
Full Getting Started Guide →
🏗️ Architecture
Fawkes is built on a modern, cloud-native architecture:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Fawkes Product Delivery Platform │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ Backstage Developer Portal + Dojo Hub │ │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ┌────────┴─────────┬──────────────┬─────────────┐ │
│ │ Collaboration │ Project │ Dojo │ │
│ │ (Mattermost) │ (Focalboard) │ Learning │ │
│ └──────────────────┴──────────────┴─────────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ┌────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ CI/CD • GitOps • Observability • Security │ │
│ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ┌────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ Kubernetes + Multi-Cloud Infrastructure │ │
│ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Key Components:
- Backstage - Developer portal and dojo learning hub
- Mattermost - Team collaboration and ChatOps
- Focalboard - Project management (bundled with Mattermost)
- Tekton - In-cluster CI/CD pipelines with golden paths (see ADR-036)
- ArgoCD - GitOps-driven continuous delivery
- Prometheus & Grafana - Metrics and dashboards
- Loki - Log aggregation and search
- SonarQube & Trivy - Security scanning
- Dojo Environment - Isolated learning labs
View Full Architecture →
🎓 Learning Paths
Path 1: I Want to Learn Platform Engineering
Start Here: Dojo White Belt
- Enroll in White Belt (8 hours)
- Complete 4 modules with hands-on labs
- Pass assessment and earn certification
- Progress through Yellow, Green, Brown, Black belts
- Total time: 40 hours to platform architect
Skills You'll Gain:
- Deploy applications with CI/CD
- Implement GitOps workflows
- Configure observability stacks
- Respond to incidents effectively
- Design platform architectures
Path 2: I Want to Deploy Fawkes
Start Here: Deployment Guide
- Review prerequisites and architecture
- Provision cloud infrastructure (30 min)
- Deploy platform components (30 min)
- Configure integrations (30 min)
- Onboard first team (1 hour)
What You'll Have:
- Production-ready IDP
- Automated DORA metrics
- Golden path templates
- Team collaboration platform
- Learning environment for your teams
Path 3: I Want to Contribute
Start Here: Contributing Guide
- Join the conversation in GitHub Discussions
- Review open issues and good first issues
- Pick something that interests you
- Submit your first PR
- Celebrate with the community! 🎉
Ways to Contribute:
- Code (platform features, dojo modules)
- Documentation (guides, tutorials)
- Dojo content (create new modules)
- Community support (help others in Discussions)
- Bug reports and feature requests
📚 Documentation
Comprehensive documentation for all aspects of Fawkes:
Getting Started
Dojo Learning
Platform Components
Operations
Contributing
🌟 Key Features
For Platform Teams
✅ Production-Ready - Battle-tested components, enterprise-grade reliability
✅ Open Source - No vendor lock-in, full control, MIT licensed
✅ Multi-Cloud - AWS, Azure, GCP with consistent APIs
✅ GitOps Native - Declarative configuration, automated reconciliation
✅ Extensible - Plugin architecture, REST APIs, customizable
✅ Well Documented - Comprehensive guides, tutorials, runbooks
For Development Teams
✅ Self-Service - Deploy without tickets, provision infrastructure instantly
✅ Golden Paths - Pre-configured templates for common scenarios
✅ Fast Feedback - Build, test, deploy in minutes
✅ Visibility - Real-time status, metrics, logs, traces in one place
✅ ChatOps - Manage deployments from team chat
✅ Safety - Automated testing, security scanning, easy rollback
For Engineering Leaders
✅ DORA Metrics - Measure and improve delivery performance
✅ Cost Visibility - Track infrastructure and operational costs
✅ Compliance - Automated policy enforcement, audit trails
✅ Team Health - Developer satisfaction tracking (NPS)
✅ Skill Development - Integrated learning with certification
✅ ROI Tracking - Quantify platform value and improvements
🔌 Extensions
Advanced capabilities available as opt-in add-ons. Extensions are not deployed
by default — they add operational complexity and resource requirements beyond the
core platform.
| Extension | Components | When to Add |
|---|
| AI | Weaviate (vector DB), RAG service for semantic search | LLM tooling, semantic doc search |
| Data Platform | DataHub (data catalog), Great Expectations (quality) | Data catalog, lineage tracking, quality validation |
View all extensions →
🤝 Community
Community is forming. Join the conversation in GitHub Discussions. Office hours and chat channels will be announced once the platform reaches beta.
Get Involved
🗺️ Roadmap
Current Release: v0.3.95 (September 2026, pre-alpha)
- ✅ Core architecture and governance
- ✅ Dojo curriculum spun out to uFawkesDojo
- ✅ User research infrastructure — personas, interview guides, insights database
- ✅ Product discovery and adoption support
- ✅ Security plane — SBOM, image signing, policy enforcement
- ✅ DORA metrics — all 5 keys live via native Prometheus recording rules (no DevLake), including fawkes-on-fawkes self-measurement — the platform tracking its own Deployment Frequency and Lead Time on the same DORA Grafana dashboard it builds for tenant services
- 🚧 Multi-cloud support (AWS, Azure, GCP) — evaluation only, no remote state (KL-01)
- ✅ GitOps workflows with ArgoCD
- ✅ Observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry)
- ✅ Tekton golden-path pipeline + CI direction set (uFawkesPipe)
- ✅ Backstage developer portal
- ✅ Mattermost collaboration platform
- ✅ Extensions — AI (Weaviate, RAG service) and Data Platform (DataHub) available as opt-in add-ons
Q1 2026: Platform Expansion
- Multi-cloud support (Azure, GCP)
- Complete belt curricula (all 5 belts)
- Advanced security features
- Enterprise features (SSO, RBAC)
- 50+ production deployments target
Q2 2026: Ecosystem & Scale
- Backstage plugin marketplace
- Community-contributed dojo modules
- Advanced DORA analytics
- Cost optimization features
- 100+ certified platform engineers
Q3 2026: Enterprise & Certification
- CNCF Sandbox application
- Platform Engineering University partnership launch
- Enterprise support offerings
- Multi-region deployments
- Chaos engineering integration
Q4 2026: Innovation
- AI-powered platform insights
- Predictive failure detection
- Automated performance optimization
- FinOps integration
- 1,000+ community members
View Detailed Roadmap →
🤝 Contributing
Fawkes is open source and community-driven. We welcome contributions of all kinds:
Ways to Contribute
🐛 Report Bugs - Open an issue
✨ Request Features - Share your ideas
📝 Improve Documentation - Help others learn and succeed
💻 Submit Code - Fix bugs, add features, optimize performance
🎓 Create Dojo Content - Develop new learning modules
🎨 Design & UX - Improve interfaces and user experience
💬 Support Community - Answer questions, help others
🌍 Translate - Help make Fawkes accessible globally
Getting Started with Contributing
-
Read Contributing Guide and Code of Conduct
-
Join the GitHub Discussions
-
Browse good first issues
-
Fork the repository and create a branch
-
Set up code quality tools - Essential for all contributors:
# Install pre-commit hooks (one-time setup)
make pre-commit-setup
# Run linters before committing
make lint
-
Make your changes with tests and documentation
-
Submit a pull request
-
Celebrate your contribution! 🎉
Code Quality Standards
All contributions must pass:
- ✅ Automated linting - Bash, Python, Go, YAML, JSON, Markdown, Terraform
- ✅ Security scanning - Secrets detection, SAST, container scanning
- ✅ Pre-commit hooks - Run automatically on
git commit
- ✅ CI/CD checks - GitHub Actions validate on every PR
📖 See: CODING_STANDARDS.md - Comprehensive coding standards guide with examples and FAQs
Tests: make test-all runs unit + BATS + BDD + integration suites (tests/, see test strategy). Integration tests need a live cluster; unit tests run anywhere.
Recognition
All contributors are recognized in:
- Contributors graph (all-contributors automation planned)
- Monthly "Contributor of the Month" spotlight
- Annual "Top Contributors" feature
- Speaking opportunities at community events
Design and brand
This repo follows the shared Fawkes and uFawkes design reference:
DESIGN.md, with tokens at https://ufawkes.dev/design/tokens.json. It is owned by
uFawkes.dev.
📜 License
Fawkes is open source software licensed under the MIT License.
This means you can:
- ✅ Use commercially
- ✅ Modify
- ✅ Distribute
- ✅ Sublicense
- ✅ Use privately
With the requirements to:
- Include the license and copyright notice
- State changes made to the code
No Warranty - Software is provided "as is" without warranty.
🙏 Acknowledgments
Fawkes is built on the shoulders of giants and inspired by:
- Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim - DORA research foundation
- Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais - Platform team patterns
- Backstage by Spotify - Developer portal inspiration
- Platform Engineering community - Best practices and patterns
- CNCF Projects - Kubernetes, Prometheus, ArgoCD, and hundreds of other tools
Special Thanks
📞 Support & Contact
Community Support (Free)
- GitHub Discussions - Questions and discussions
- GitHub Issues - Bug reports and feature requests
- Documentation - Comprehensive guides and tutorials
Professional Support
Roadmap item — not yet available. Professional support (implementation assistance, training, SLA) is planned as a future offering. Follow GitHub Discussions for announcements.
🚀 Start Your Journey
Choose your path:
🎓 Learn Platform Engineering
Enroll in Dojo White Belt →
Start your journey from novice to platform architect. 8 hours to your first certification.
🏗️ Deploy Fawkes Platform
Follow Quick Start Guide →
Get your platform running in 30 minutes. Production-ready in hours, not months.
🤝 Join the Community
Join GitHub Discussions →
Connect with platform engineers, ask questions, and share your experiences.
💻 Contribute to Fawkes
View Good First Issues →
Make your first contribution and become part of the community.
🛡 License
This project is licensed under the MIT License.
uFawkes Stack Ecosystem
Fawkes is the core platform. The uFawkes stacks are composable components that extend the platform:
| Stack | Description | Link |
|---|
| uFawkesObs | Observability — Prometheus, Grafana, AI dashboards | GitHub |
| uFawkesPipe | CI/CD — Tekton golden path, Woodpecker, DevSecOps | GitHub |
| uFawkesDORA | DORA metrics — merged into uFawkesObs | merged |
| uFawkesSec | Security — merged into uFawkesPipe (DefectDojo, Infisical, Trivy, Falco) | merged |
| uFawkesDevX | Developer experience — golden paths, IDP templates | GitHub |
| uFawkesAI | AI agent templates — golden path scaffolding | GitHub |
Marketing Site: ufawkes.dev
Product Suite Roadmap: ROADMAP.md
