Agentic Design Patterns — AWS EKS Helm Keycloak

Patterns from "Agentic Design Patterns" (Gulli & Sauco, 2025) applied to cloud-native Kubernetes infrastructure, authentication, and CI/CD orchestration.

Applied Patterns

Prompt Chaining

Relevance: EKS cluster provisioning is a multi-step pipeline where each step's output feeds the next — VPC → EKS → node groups → Helm releases → Keycloak realms. Current Implementation: The setup and ship commands execute sequential AWS CLI, Terraform, and Helm steps, passing cluster context between them. Enhancement: Make the chain explicit with typed handoff contracts. Each step emits a structured context object (cluster ARN, kubeconfig path, namespace map) that the next step validates before proceeding. Failed steps trigger the Exception Handling pattern rather than silent failure.

Planning

Relevance: Kubernetes architecture decisions — node sizing, namespace layout, RBAC structure, ingress topology — require upfront planning before any kubectl apply. Current Implementation: The pipeline-scaffold command scaffolds a deployment plan, and service-onboard pre-validates service requirements. Enhancement: Add an explicit planning phase that generates a deployment plan document (cluster topology, resource estimates, dependency graph) before any infrastructure changes. The plan is reviewed (HITL) or auto-approved based on scope.