Platform Engineering Labs Extends formae with Full Kubernetes Support and Native Helm Integration

The open‑source IaC platform formae now manages Kubernetes clusters, Amazon EKS, Microsoft AKS, and Helm charts directly, adds .tfvars compatibility, and launches a public plugin hub, aiming to reduce drift and simplify multi‑cloud operations.

Service update

Platform Engineering Labs announced a major version of its open‑source infrastructure‑as‑code platform formae. The new release adds native Kubernetes resource handling, first‑class support for managed services such as Amazon EKS and Microsoft AKS, and a built‑in Helm engine that can import existing charts without rewriting them. In addition, formae now reads Terraform .tfvars files, letting teams reuse variable definitions from legacy code bases. A public plugin hub, powered by the recently released Plugin SDK, gives developers a marketplace for sharing extensions and a CI pipeline that validates compatibility before publishing.

The company positions these capabilities as a way to keep a live, continuously versioned “system of record” for all infrastructure, regardless of whether changes originate from formae, kubectl, Helm, or external CI pipelines.

Use cases

1. Unified governance for hybrid clusters

Enterprises that run workloads on both on‑prem Kubernetes and managed clouds can now point formae at each cluster. The platform discovers every pod, service, and custom resource, creates a declarative snapshot, and stores it in the same git‑backed repository used for other cloud resources. This eliminates the need for separate state files per environment and gives security teams a single audit trail.

2. Incremental migration from Terraform

Organizations with large Terraform codebases can copy their .tfvars into formae, let the platform import the variable values, and then start managing the live resources through formae’s discovery engine. The original Terraform manifests can be retired gradually, reducing the risk of a big‑bang cut‑over.

3. Reuse of existing Helm charts

Development teams often rely on community Helm charts for databases, ingress controllers, or monitoring stacks. With the native Helm integration, a chart can be referenced in a formae module, parameterized with values from the imported .tfvars, and tracked like any other resource. No separate Helm release process is required, and every change to the chart values is versioned automatically.

4. Extensible automation via the Public Hub

The new plugin hub lets platform engineers publish custom validators, policy checks, or AI‑assisted generators. Because plugins are decoupled from individual deployments, a single version can serve dozens of teams, simplifying upgrade paths and reducing operational overhead.

Trade‑offs

Learning curve – formae’s discovery‑first model differs from the declarative‑apply flow of Terraform or Pulumi. Teams must adjust to a workflow where the source of truth is derived from the live cluster, which can feel counter‑intuitive at first.
Performance considerations – Continuous discovery of large clusters adds API traffic. Organizations with thousands of nodes should size the discovery agents appropriately and may need to tune the polling interval to avoid throttling cloud provider limits.
Plugin ecosystem maturity – The Public Hub is new, so the catalog of community‑tested plugins is still growing. Early adopters may need to write or sponsor their own extensions until the marketplace reaches critical mass.
Helm version alignment – formae bundles a specific Helm version. If a team relies on features introduced in a newer Helm release, they must wait for the platform to update its bundled binary or manage the chart outside of formae.

Overall, the update moves formae closer to a unified, cloud‑native IaC platform that can serve as the authoritative record for both traditional cloud resources and Kubernetes workloads. By removing the need for separate state files and by allowing existing Helm charts to be consumed directly, the platform promises lower drift, faster onboarding, and a clearer path for teams transitioning from legacy Terraform setups.

Further reading