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What is Project Yellow Olive?

Pokémon Yellow, but you tame Kubernetes clusters instead of Pokémon.

Project Yellow Olive is a terminal-native retro adventure built with Textual. It turns Kubernetes practice into a story-driven game: broken pods, miswired Services, and missing routes show up as in-world problems you fix with real kubectl commands.

The idea

Kubernetes is powerful and everywhere, but learning it can feel dry. Yellow Olive uses nostalgia and narrative to lower the barrier - you meet characters like Professor Bald, Electromon, and PsyQuack while working through hands-on cluster scenarios.

This is not a replacement for CKA/CKAD prep or platforms like Killer.sh. It is a practice ground to build confidence, stay engaged, and rehearse debugging in a low-stakes world that still uses a real local cluster.

How it works

  1. You run the game in one terminal (yellow-olive start or python app.py).
  2. You keep a second terminal open as your Command Chamber for kubectl.
  3. The game starts a local Minikube profile and applies deliberately broken manifests.
  4. You read YAML in yellow-olive-lab/, fix the cluster, then type psyquack validate.
  5. PsyQuack checks live cluster state - effort is not enough, the fix must be correct.

What you learn

Each challenge maps game vocabulary to real Kubernetes concepts:

Yellow Olive Kubernetes
Posemon Container
Pokepod Pod
Region / Town Namespace

Oakwood Meadows (challenges 1-7) focuses on Pods. Signal Town (challenges 8-13) focuses on Services, DNS, NodePort, Endpoints, and Ingress.

Who this is for

  • Developers who want a gentler on-ramp to Kubernetes
  • Learners who benefit from story and structure alongside docs
  • Contributors who want to add educational scenarios to an open-source game

Where to go next