🎓 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.
Start Learning → · Deploy Platform → · Read Docs → · Join Community →
Fawkes isn't just another Internal Developer Platform—it's a complete Internal Product Delivery Platform that uniquely combines:
Learn platform engineering by doing, not just reading. Progress through belt levels while building real skills on production-grade infrastructure.
Everything teams need: infrastructure, CI/CD, collaboration, project management, observability, and security—all integrated, all open source.
DORA metrics are a design goal. The Alpha release targets two of them, deployment frequency and lead time, queryable in Grafana with native PromQL.
One platform, one login, one interface. No more context switching between a dozen tools.
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
📊 Cost estimation and business case docs are not yet published — see the archive deployment guide for current AWS notes.
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:
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.
Unlike infrastructure-only solutions, Fawkes provides everything product teams need:
- 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
- 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
- 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 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 →
- 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
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.
Build and operate internal platforms with best practices baked in. Spend less time on toil, more on innovation.
Make the transition with a comprehensive platform that embodies modern practices.
Improve delivery performance with data-driven insights. Achieve elite DORA metrics.
Learn by doing with hands-on labs on production-grade infrastructure. Earn recognized certifications.
Don't start from scratch. Deploy a production-ready platform and customize to your needs.
Not sure where to begin? Choose the path that fits your goal:
| Path | Goal | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 0 — Learn via Docker Stacks | Learn by doing: one composable stack + Dojo belt, no cluster | ~10 min |
| A — Evaluate Locally | Try Fawkes on your laptop with k3d — no cloud account needed | ~20 min |
| B — Deploy to Cloud | Production-capable deployment on AWS EKS | 2–4 hours |
| C — Enterprise Multi-Cloud | Multi-cloud, SSO, RBAC, compliance | 1–2 days |
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 credentialsFawkes 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
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
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
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
Comprehensive documentation for all aspects of Fawkes:
- Installation Guide
- Deploy Your First Service - 30-minute quick start
- Architecture Overview
- Configuration Reference
- 🎥 Epic 1 Demo Video Script - 30-minute platform walkthrough
- 📋 Epic 1 Demo Checklist - Quick reference for recording
- Dojo Architecture
- White Belt Curriculum
- Yellow Belt Curriculum
- Green Belt Curriculum
- Brown Belt Curriculum
- Black Belt Curriculum
- Backstage - Developer portal and service catalog
- Mattermost - Team collaboration and ChatOps
- CI Direction: Tekton + uFawkesPipe - Golden-path pipeline (Jenkins retained only for legacy; see Jenkins CaSC notes)
- ArgoCD / GitOps - Declarative delivery and rollback protocol
- Observability Stack - Prometheus, Grafana, OTEL, Loki
- Runbooks - Platform operations procedures
- Security - Best practices and security plane
- Troubleshooting Guide
- AT-E1-001 Validation Tests
- Azure AKS Validation Checklist
- Contributing Guide
- Code of Conduct
- Development Setup
- Pre-commit Hooks Setup
- Architectural Decision Records
✅ 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
✅ 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
✅ 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
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 |
Community is forming. Join the conversation in GitHub Discussions. Office hours and chat channels will be announced once the platform reaches beta.
- GitHub Discussions - Ask questions, share ideas
- GitHub Issues - Report bugs and request features
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
- Multi-cloud support (Azure, GCP)
- Complete belt curricula (all 5 belts)
- Advanced security features
- Enterprise features (SSO, RBAC)
- 50+ production deployments target
- Backstage plugin marketplace
- Community-contributed dojo modules
- Advanced DORA analytics
- Cost optimization features
- 100+ certified platform engineers
- CNCF Sandbox application
- Platform Engineering University partnership launch
- Enterprise support offerings
- Multi-region deployments
- Chaos engineering integration
- AI-powered platform insights
- Predictive failure detection
- Automated performance optimization
- FinOps integration
- 1,000+ community members
Fawkes is open source and community-driven. We welcome contributions of all kinds:
🐛 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
-
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! 🎉
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.
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
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.
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.
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
- All our contributors
- Platform Engineering University for certification partnership
- The open source community for feedback and support
- Early adopters who believed in the vision
- GitHub Discussions - Questions and discussions
- GitHub Issues - Bug reports and feature requests
- Documentation - Comprehensive guides and tutorials
Roadmap item — not yet available. Professional support (implementation assistance, training, SLA) is planned as a future offering. Follow GitHub Discussions for announcements.
Choose your path:
Start your journey from novice to platform architect. 8 hours to your first certification.
Get your platform running in 30 minutes. Production-ready in hours, not months.
Connect with platform engineers, ask questions, and share your experiences.
Make your first contribution and become part of the community.
Built with ❤️ by platform engineers, for platform engineers
Dojo • Quick Start • Docs • Community • Contributing • License
Fawkes: Named after Dumbledore's phoenix, symbolizing resilience and renewal
This project is licensed under the MIT License.
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