Playhouse
Playhouses are persistent, shared Kubernetes clusters that AME sets up to host Playrooms.
Alpha
Playhouses are in active development. Commands, flags, and output may change between releases.
What it is
A Playhouse is a shared environment that hosts Playrooms. Under the hood it is an opinionated Kubernetes cluster (an AME cluster) whose slug always starts with playhouse-.
You create a Playhouse once and it stays running. A team or person points at a single Playhouse, and everyone creates and deletes their own Playrooms inside it. You don't have to configure anything by hand: acloud playhouse create sets up everything in one command.
acloud playhouse create demo ─► playhouse-demo (Kubernetes cluster)
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ system node pool (Flux, Tailscale operator) │
│ playrooms node pool (autoscaling, isolated) │
│ └─ Playroom a Playroom b … │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Why use it
Opinionated
One command provisions a cluster already sized and configured to host Playrooms, no Kubernetes knowledge required.
Isolated pool
Playrooms run on a dedicated, autoscaling node pool that is labelled and tainted so only Playrooms land on it.
Contained by default
An egress policy blocks cloud metadata and private networks, so an agent can't reach what it shouldn't. Public internet and DNS stay open.
SSH connectivity
The Tailscale operator gives each Playroom a private hostname on your tailnet, no public IPs, no open ports.
Auto-upgraded
A Playhouse tracks an update channel and upgrades itself on a maintenance schedule.
Lean
Monitoring and logging are off by default. A Playhouse is meant to be a sandbox, not a production cluster.
Key concepts
Playhouse
The cluster itself, named playhouse-NAME. A cluster counts as a Playhouse when its slug starts with playhouse-.
System node pool
A small, fixed pool that runs always-on platform pods (Flux, the Tailscale operator).
Playrooms node pool
An autoscaling, isolated pool that grows and shrinks with the Playroom workload.
Bootstrap
What create installs in the cluster: 1 Flux, 2 the Tailscale operator, 3 the playrooms namespace, and 4 the egress policy.
Quick links to commands
playhouse create
Provision and bootstrap a new Playhouse.
playhouse list
List the Playhouses in your organisation.
playhouse delete
Delete a Playhouse and the cluster behind it.
SEE ALSO
- Getting started: from zero to a running Playhouse end-to-end
- How it works: what create sets up and how a Playhouse is put together
- Commands: all acloud playhouse subcommands
- Playroom: the workspaces that run inside a Playhouse
- Playground overview: how Playhouses and Playrooms fit together