Agentic Ops Framework (AOF)
Overview
The Agentic Ops Framework (AOF) is an open source, Rust-based framework that lets DevOps, SRE, and platform engineers build and orchestrate AI agents using Kubernetes-style YAML specifications and a kubectl-style CLI (aofctl). It is positioned as "n8n for Agentic Ops" — a way to define and run operational AI agents without writing Python, by reusing the declarative mental model operators already have from Kubernetes.
Key Concepts / Architecture
AOF defines three core resource abstractions, each expressed as a Kubernetes-style manifest (apiVersion: aof.dev/v1, kind: ...):
- Agent — a single AI instance configured with instructions, tools, and a model
- AgentFleet — a coordinated team of multiple agents working together on a task
- AgentFlow — a DAG-based, multi-step workflow with conditional branches and human-approval gates
The CLI mirrors kubectl semantics (e.g., aofctl apply, aofctl run agent), so operators familiar with Kubernetes tooling can apply the same workflow to agent definitions.
Key Features
- LLM providers: OpenAI (GPT-4), Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Ollama (local models), and Groq, switchable without code changes
- Integrations:
kubectl, shell/bash execution, HTTP requests, Slack, Discord, Telegram, GitHub, PagerDuty (incident webhooks), and custom MCP tool servers - Human-in-the-loop: approval gates implemented as conditional workflow branches — e.g., routing high-severity findings to Slack for manual sign-off before remediation runs
- Safety controls: allowed command lists and audit logging to constrain what agents can execute against live infrastructure
- Memory: persistent memory and RAG integration intended to let agents retain context and learn across interactions
Suitable For (Pros)
- Teams that want operational/DevOps automation agents (incident response, ChatOps bots, remediation workflows) defined declaratively, alongside existing Kubernetes manifests
- Organizations standardizing on a single CLI/YAML mental model across infrastructure and agent definitions
- Use cases requiring tight integration with ops tooling (PagerDuty, Slack, GitHub) out of the box
Status
- Apache 2.0 licensed, written in Rust (~90% of codebase)
- Beta maturity (latest release v0.4.0-beta at time of writing); installable via Cargo, pre-built binaries, or GitHub Releases (
curl -sSL https://aof.dev/install.sh | bash) - Maintained under the
agenticdevopsorganization on GitHub; documentation at docs.aof.sh
See Also
- kagent — CNCF Sandbox project for running agents as native Kubernetes CRDs (Go/Python stack vs. AOF's Rust CLI-first approach)
- KAOS (K8s Agent Orchestration System) — another Kubernetes-native multi-agent orchestration project
- Kubernetes Agent Sandbox (SIG Apps)
- Standards/MCP — protocol AOF uses for custom tool integration
- AgentOps Overview
- ProductionBestPractices: Deployment — GitOps and human-in-the-loop deployment gating patterns
References
- aof.sh — official project site
- docs.aof.sh — documentation index
- GitHub - agenticdevops/aof — source repository