OpenShift Lightspeed & MCP Gateway

OpenShift Lightspeed (OLS) is an AI assistant integrated into the OpenShift web console. Combined with the MCP Gateway (a Kuadrant community extension), it can execute cluster operations through AI-callable tools.

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Interactive 3D Architecture
Click to explore the MCP Gateway graph with 5 servers and 55 tools — drag to rotate

Accessing OpenShift Lightspeed

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Console at https://console-openshift-console.apps.cluster.example.com

  2. Click the Lightspeed icon in the console header (chat bubble icon).

  3. Ask questions about your cluster, workloads, or Kubernetes concepts.

Architecture: OLS + MCP Gateway

graph TB
    USER[Platform Engineer] -->|Chat| OLS[OpenShift Lightspeed]
    OLS -->|LLM Inference| LLM[LLM Model Server]
    OLS -->|Streamable HTTP| MCPGW[MCP Gateway]

    subgraph MCP_Servers[MCP Servers - 55 Tools]
        K8S[k8s-mcp-server - 22 tools]
        OCPS[ocp-mcp-server - 19 tools]
        ARGO[argocd-mcp-server - 14 tools]
    end

    OLS -->|Direct SSE| RHDH[rhdh-mcp-server - 7 tools]

    MCPGW --> K8S
    MCPGW --> OCPS
    MCPGW --> ARGO
    K8S -->|kubectl| CLUSTER[OpenShift API]
    OCPS -->|oc| CLUSTER
    ARGO -->|REST API| ARGOCD[ArgoCD Server]
    RHDH --> DEVHUB[Developer Hub]

MCP Tools Reference — 55 Tools

The MCP Gateway federates 55 tools from 4 backend MCP servers, plus 7 from Developer Hub accessed directly. Each tool is callable by the LLM through natural language prompts.

Kubernetes Tools (prefix k8s — 22 tools)

Tool Name Description

k8spods_list

List all pods across the cluster

k8spods_list_in_namespace

List pods in a specific namespace

k8spods_get

Get details of a specific pod

k8spods_log

Get logs from a pod

k8spods_top

Show resource usage for pods

k8spods_run

Run a pod with a given image

k8spods_exec

Execute a command inside a pod

k8spods_delete

Delete a pod

k8sresources_list

List resources by kind in a namespace

k8sresources_get

Get a specific resource by name

k8sresources_create_or_update

Create or update a resource from YAML

k8sresources_delete

Delete a specific resource

k8sresources_scale

Scale a deployment/statefulset

k8snamespaces_list

List all namespaces

k8sprojects_list

List all OpenShift projects

k8snodes_top

Show resource usage for nodes

k8snodes_log

Get logs from a node

k8snodes_stats_summary

Get stats summary from a node

k8sevents_list

List events in a namespace

k8shelm_install

Install a Helm chart

k8shelm_list

List Helm releases

k8shelm_uninstall

Uninstall a Helm release

Example Prompts

  • "List all pods in the neuralbank-stack namespace" → k8spods_list_in_namespace

  • "Show me the logs of the neuralbank-backend pod" → k8spods_log

  • "What events happened in user1-neuralbank?" → k8sevents_list

  • "Scale the frontend deployment to 3 replicas" → k8sresources_scale

  • "Install Redis using Helm in my namespace" → k8shelm_install

  • "Show me node resource usage" → k8snodes_top

OpenShift Tools (prefix ocp — 19 tools)

Tool Name Description

ocpcreateDeployment

Create a new Deployment

ocpdeployDatabase

Deploy a database (Redis, PostgreSQL, etc.)

ocpcreateService

Create a Kubernetes Service

ocpcreateHpa

Create a Horizontal Pod Autoscaler

ocpcreateNetworkPolicy

Create a NetworkPolicy

ocpmonitorDeployments

Monitor all deployments in a namespace

ocpdetectResourceIssues

Detect resource issues (OOMKill, pending pods)

ocpcheckClusterHealth

Check overall cluster health

ocpcheckNodeConditions

Check node conditions (Ready, Pressure)

ocpcheckKubeletStatus

Check kubelet status on nodes

ocpcheckCrioStatus

Check CRI-O container runtime status

ocpgetPerformanceMetrics

Get cluster performance metrics

ocpanalyzeJournalctlPodErrors

Analyze journalctl for pod errors

ocpanalyzePodDisruptions

Analyze pod disruption budgets

ocprunCpuStressTest

Run a CPU stress test

ocprunNetworkTest

Run a network connectivity test

ocprunStorageBenchmark

Run a storage I/O benchmark

ocprunDatabaseBenchmark

Run a database benchmark

ocprunKubeBurner

Run kube-burner load test

Example Prompts

  • "Deploy a Redis database in my namespace" → ocpdeployDatabase

  • "Check the cluster health" → ocpcheckClusterHealth

  • "Are there any pods with resource issues?" → ocpdetectResourceIssues

  • "Create a HorizontalPodAutoscaler for my backend" → ocpcreateHpa

  • "Run a network test between my services" → ocprunNetworkTest

  • "Monitor all deployments in neuralbank-stack" → ocpmonitorDeployments

ArgoCD Tools (prefix argo — 14 tools)

Tool Name Description

argolist_applications

List all ArgoCD applications (supports search, pagination)

argolist_clusters

List clusters registered with ArgoCD

argoget_application

Get full details of an application

argoget_application_resource_tree

Get the resource tree (all child resources)

argoget_application_managed_resources

Get managed resources with filters (kind, namespace)

argoget_application_workload_logs

Get logs from workloads managed by an app

argoget_application_events

Get application-level events

argoget_resource_events

Get events for a specific managed resource

argoget_resources

Get YAML manifests of managed resources

argoget_resource_actions

List available actions on a resource (restart, etc.)

argocreate_application

Create a new ArgoCD application

argoupdate_application

Update an existing application

argodelete_application

Delete an ArgoCD application

argosync_application

Trigger a sync (supports dry-run, prune, revision)

argorun_resource_action

Execute an action on a managed resource

Example Prompts

  • "List all ArgoCD applications" → argolist_applications

  • "Which applications are out of sync?" → argolist_applications + filter

  • "Sync the developer-hub application" → argosync_application

  • "Show me the resource tree for the showroom app" → argoget_application_resource_tree

  • "Why is the mcp-gateway app failing?" → argoget_resource_events + argoget_application_workload_logs

  • "Restart the workshop-registration deployment" → argorun_resource_action

  • "Show me the managed resources of type Deployment in ols" → argoget_application_managed_resources

  • "Get the events for the mcp-gateway application" → argoget_application_events

Developer Hub / Backstage Tools (no prefix — 7 tools, direct SSE)

These tools connect OLS directly to Red Hat Developer Hub (not through the Kuadrant Gateway):

Tool Name Description

fetch-template-metadata

List and search Software Templates in the catalog

fetch-catalog-entities

List/search catalog entities (Components, APIs, Systems)

register-catalog-entities

Register new entities from a URL

unregister-catalog-entities

Remove registered entities

fetch-techdocs

List entities with TechDocs documentation

analyze-techdocs-coverage

Get documentation coverage statistics

retrieve-techdocs-content

Retrieve TechDocs content for a specific entity

Example Prompts

  • "List all Software Templates available in Developer Hub" → fetch-template-metadata

  • "Show me all registered components" → fetch-catalog-entities

  • "What entities have TechDocs?" → fetch-techdocs

  • "Register a new entity from https://gitea.example.com/catalog-info.yaml" → register-catalog-entities

What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)?

MCP is an open standard that allows AI models to interact with external tools securely:

  • Tools — Functions the AI can call (e.g., list pods, sync ArgoCD apps)

  • Resources — Data the AI can read (e.g., cluster state, catalog entities)

  • Prompts — Pre-built conversation templates

  • Transports — Streamable HTTP (Kuadrant Gateway) or SSE (Developer Hub direct)

The MCP Gateway acts as a federation layer, aggregating multiple MCP servers behind a single endpoint with unified authentication via Kuadrant.

OLS Configuration

OpenShift Lightspeed connects to MCP servers through its OLSConfig custom resource:

apiVersion: ols.openshift.io/v1alpha1
kind: OLSConfig
metadata:
  name: cluster
spec:
  featureGates:
    - MCPServer
  mcpServers:
    - name: mcp-gateway
      url: "http://mcp-gateway-istio.mcp-system.svc:8080/mcp"
      timeout: 120
    - name: rhdh-catalog
      url: "http://backstage-developer-hub.developer-hub.svc.cluster.local/api/mcp-actions/v1"
      timeout: 120
      headers:
        - name: Authorization
          valueFrom:
            type: secret
            secretRef:
              name: rhdh-mcp-token

MCP Gateway Registration

Each backend MCP server is registered with the Kuadrant MCP Gateway:

apiVersion: mcp.kuadrant.io/v1alpha1
kind: MCPServerRegistration
metadata:
  name: argocd-mcp-server
  namespace: mcp-system
spec:
  targetRef:
    name: argocd-mcp-server-route
  toolPrefix: argo
  path: /mcp

The toolPrefix ensures tool names don’t collide across servers (e.g., argolist_applications vs k8spods_list).

ArgoCD MCP Server

The ArgoCD MCP server (argoproj-labs/mcp-for-argocd) runs on the Red Hat certified ubi9/nodejs-22 image and uses Streamable HTTP transport:

image: registry.redhat.io/ubi9/nodejs-22:latest
command: ["npx"]
args: ["argocd-mcp@latest", "http"]
env:
  - name: ARGOCD_BASE_URL
    value: "https://openshift-gitops-server.openshift-gitops.svc.cluster.local"
  - name: ARGOCD_API_TOKEN
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: argocd-mcp-token
        key: ARGOCD_API_TOKEN

Customer Service MCP

The workshop also deploys a Customer Service MCP as part of the Neuralbank stack. This MCP server exposes backend operations (customer CRUD, credit scoring) as AI-callable tools:

# Check MCP server tools endpoint
curl -s -H "X-API-Key: $API_KEY" \
  "https://user1-customer-service-mcp.apps.cluster.example.com/tools" \
  | python3 -m json.tool

Summary

OpenShift Lightspeed with the MCP Gateway provides 55 federated tools across 5 MCP servers:

Server Prefix Tools

k8s-mcp-server

k8s

22

ocp-mcp-server

ocp

19

argocd-mcp-server

argo

14

rhdh-mcp-server

(none)

7

customer-svc-mcp

(app)

varies

This transforms the OpenShift console into an AI-powered operations center where platform engineers can manage Kubernetes resources, ArgoCD applications, Developer Hub catalog, and business services — all through natural language.