Choose how to run Infrared
Get started by installing Infrared yourself: one helm install of its public chart on a GKE or EKS cluster in your own cloud, then the setup wizard. darkshift also hosts Infrared in a private beta. Either way it is the same Infrared: Products, Changes, deployments and agents work the same, and your repos and gitops repo stay yours.
Infrared runs on a Kubernetes cluster called the management cluster. It holds Infrared itself, Argo CD and the components your gitops repo describes. Your Products run in zones on that cluster or on workload clusters that Infrared registers or builds for you. What differs between the choices below is who runs the management cluster.
| GKE | EKS | Hosted | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs Infrared | You, in your Google Cloud project | You, in your AWS account | darkshift |
| Where it lives | A GKE cluster, built from Infrared's GKE template or your own | An EKS cluster, built from Infrared's EKS template or your own | darkshift's hosted environments |
| Good for | Getting started, and production on Google Cloud | Production on AWS | Teams that would rather not operate a management cluster |
| How you start | helm install from the public chart | helm install from the public chart | A conversation about your architecture, then an invitation to the private beta |
| Guide | Install on GKE | Install on EKS | Hosted environments |
Wherever Infrared runs, it can deploy to workload clusters in your own clouds: a GKE or EKS cluster it builds from a cluster template through a cloud account you grant it, or any cluster you register with a kubeconfig, Linode clusters among them. darkshift builds, uses and deletes a cluster from each template every day to prove the templates still work.
What every self-hosted install needs
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Infrared's chart and images, which are public. From 0.1.0, anyone can pull them, with no sign-in and no pull secret:
Chart oci://us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/darkshift-public/infrared/charts/infraredImages us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/darkshift-public/infrared/infrared-<component>To install with us, or to talk through your setup, book a call or write to [email protected].
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No license until the open beta ends. Infrared 0.1 is an open beta: an install runs fully with no license through November 30, 2026 (UTC). After that, new agent steps and promotions to production wait until a license from darkshift is installed, and everything else keeps running. Later releases of Infrared need a license bought from darkshift. See Licensing.
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A forge for your repos and gitops repo: a GitHub organization you administer, connected through a GitHub App the setup wizard creates, or Gitea running beside Infrared on the management cluster.
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A domain on Cloudflare, for Infrared's own address and your environments' addresses.
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A model key, if agents will build Changes. Each org sets its own Anthropic API key, and every run reports what it cost.
How an install comes up
One helm install puts Infrared on the cluster. The setup wizard then creates the root user and the platform org, confirms the management cluster, connects your forge and creates your gitops repo, and Argo CD syncs it. One of the Applications Argo CD syncs is Infrared itself, so from then on Infrared is managed through your gitops repo like everything else, and every upgrade is a pull request. See Upgrades.