With the recent v1.35 release of Kubernetes, support for a kubelet configuration drop-in directory is generally available. The newly stable feature simplifies the management of kubelet configuration across large, heterogeneous clusters.

With v1.35, the kubelet command line argument --config-dir is production-ready and fully supported, allowing you to specify a directory containing kubelet configuration drop-in files. All files in that directory will be automatically merged with your main kubelet configuration. This allows cluster administrators to maintain a cohesive base configuration for kubelets while enabling targeted customizations for different node groups or use cases, and without complex tooling or manual configuration management.

The problem: managing kubelet configuration at scale

As Kubernetes clusters grow larger and more complex, they often include heterogeneous node pools with different hardware capabilities, workload requirements, and operational constraints. This diversity necessitates different kubelet configurations across node groups—yet managing these varied configurations at scale becomes increasingly challenging. Several pain points emerge:

• Configuration drift: Different nodes may have slightly different configurations, leading to inconsistent behavior
• Node group customization: GPU nodes, edge nodes, and standard compute nodes often require different kubelet settings
• Operational overhead: Maintaining separate, complete configuration files for each node type is error-prone and difficult to audit
• Change management: Rolling out configuration changes across heterogeneous node pools requires careful coordination

Before this support was added to Kubernetes, cluster administrators had to choose between using a single monolithic configuration file for all nodes, manually maintaining multiple complete configuration files, or relying on separate tooling. Each approach had its own drawbacks. This graduation to stable gives cluster administrators a fully supported fourth way to solve that challenge.

Example use cases

Managing heterogeneous node pools

Consider a cluster with multiple node types: standard compute nodes, high-capacity nodes (such as those with GPUs or large amounts of memory), and edge nodes with specialized requirements.

Base configuration

File: 00-base.conf

apiVersion: kubelet.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: KubeletConfiguration
clusterDNS:
 - "10.96.0.10"
clusterDomain: cluster.local

High-capacity node override

File: 50-high-capacity-nodes.conf

apiVersion: kubelet.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: KubeletConfiguration
maxPods: 50
systemReserved:
 memory: "4Gi"
 cpu: "1000m"

Edge node override

File: 50-edge-nodes.conf (edge compute typically has lower capacity)

apiVersion: kubelet.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: KubeletConfiguration
evictionHard:
 memory.available: "500Mi"
 nodefs.available: "5%"

With this structure, high-capacity nodes apply both the base configuration and the capacity-specific overrides, while edge nodes apply the base configuration with edge-specific settings.

Gradual configuration rollouts

When rolling out configuration changes, you can:

1. Add a new drop-in file with a high numeric prefix (e.g., 99-new-feature.conf)
2. Test the changes on a subset of nodes
3. Gradually roll out to more nodes
4. Once stable, merge changes into the base configuration

Viewing the merged configuration

Since configuration is now spread across multiple files, you can inspect the final merged configuration using the kubelet's /configz endpoint:

# Start kubectl proxy
kubectl proxy

# In another terminal, fetch the merged configuration
# Change the '<node-name>' placeholder before running the curl command
curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:8001/api/v1/nodes/<node-name>/proxy/configz | jq .

This shows the actual configuration the kubelet is using after all merging has been applied. The merged configuration also includes any configuration settings that were specified via kubelet command-line arguments.

For detailed setup instructions, configuration examples, and merging behavior, see the official documentation:

• Set Kubelet Parameters Via A Configuration File
• Kubelet Configuration Directory Merging

Good practices

When using the kubelet configuration drop-in directory:

1. Test configurations incrementally: Always test new drop-in configurations on a subset of nodes before rolling out cluster-wide to minimize risk

2. Version control your drop-ins: Store your drop-in configuration files in version control (or the configuration source from which these are generated) alongside your infrastructure as code to track changes and enable easy rollbacks

3. Use numeric prefixes for predictable ordering: Name files with numeric prefixes (e.g., 00-, 50-, 90-) to explicitly control merge order and make the configuration layering obvious to other administrators

4. Be mindful of temporary files: Some text editors automatically create backup files (such as .bak, .swp, or files with ~ suffix) in the same directory when editing. Ensure these temporary or backup files are not left in the configuration directory, as they may be processed by the kubelet

Acknowledgments

This feature was developed through the collaborative efforts of SIG Node. Special thanks to all contributors who helped design, implement, test, and document this feature across its journey from alpha in v1.28, through beta in v1.30, to GA in v1.35.

To provide feedback on this feature, join the Kubernetes Node Special Interest Group, participate in discussions on the public Slack channel (#sig-node), or file an issue on GitHub.

Get involved

If you have feedback or questions about kubelet configuration management, or want to share your experience using this feature, join the discussion:

• SIG Node community page
• Kubernetes Slack in the #sig-node channel
• SIG Node mailing list

SIG Node would love to hear about your experiences using this feature in production!

Today was the first and last day of my workweek. I’m off through January 2nd, and will likely publish a Reading List here and there. But not every day until I’m back on the 5th. Enjoy your Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) break!

[blog] One weird trick to manage engineering crises; stakeholders love it. Terrific post. You need to interleave tactical and strategic wins while being transparent with stakeholders about priorities and progress.

[blog] My LLM coding workflow going into 2026. Feel like you’re still winging it with AI? You’re not alone. But Addy’s workflow might form the basis for doing it better.

[article] Kubernetes 1.35 “Timbernetes” Introduces Vertical Scaling. There are a few features here worth keeping an eye on.

[article] AI Trends for 2026. I don’t think most would look favorably upon their “AI predictions” from twelve months ago. But Charlie did pretty well, and has opinions about what 2026 might hold.

[blog] Google Research 2025: Bolder breakthroughs, bigger impact. This is frankly a breathtaking number of accomplishments in a single year.

[blog] 10 Things Developers Want from their Agentic IDEs in 2025. So good. Here’s a roundup of what you should expect to be standard fare next year.

[article] Building AI agents the safe way. What’s the “boring, necessary engineering” you need to do to have a secure AI agent strategy? Matt takes a look.

[blog] 40 of our most helpful AI tips from 2025. Good ones! If you’re still bopping around with gimmicky uses of AI, get some inspiration from this list.

[blog] 2026 vibe coding tool comparison. I’d imagine that a few other tools will make lists like this in the near future. But in the meantime, this is a good look at Replit, v0, Lovable, and Bolt.

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The end of the year creates a rare kind of quiet. It is the kind that makes it easier to reflect on how you have been building, what you have been learning, and what you want to do differently next year. It is also the perfect moment to catch up on the mountain of browser tabs you’ve kept open and podcast episodes you’ve bookmarked. Speaking of podcasts, we have one! (Wow, smooth transition, Cassidy).

If you’re looking to level-up your thinking around AI, open source software sustainability, and the future of software, we have some great conversations you can take on the road with you. 

This year on the GitHub Podcast, we talked with maintainers, educators, data experts, and builders across the open source ecosystem. These conversations were not just about trends or tools. They offered practical ways to think more clearly about where software is headed and how to grow alongside it. If 2026 is about building with more intention, these five episodes are a great place to start.

Understand where AI tooling is actually heading

If this year left you feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change in AI tooling, you are not alone. New models, new agents, and new workflows seemed to appear every week, often without much clarity on how they fit together or which ones would actually last.

Our Unlocking the power of MCP episode slows things down. It introduces the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as a way to make sense of that chaos, explaining how an open standard can help AI systems interact with tools in consistent and transparent ways. Rather than adding to the noise, the conversation gives you a clearer mental model for how modern AI tools are being built and why open standards matter for trust, interoperability, and long-term flexibility. Most importantly, MCP makes building better for everyone. Learn about how the standard works (and you can check out GitHub’s open sourced MCP server, too).

Ship smaller, smarter software—faster

Not every meaningful piece of software needs a pitch deck or a product roadmap. Building tools and the future of DIY development explores a growing shift toward personal, purpose-built tools. These are tools created to solve one specific problem well, often by the people who feel that pain most acutely. Developers and non-developers alike are really empowered these days by open source and AI tools, because they’re enabled to build faster and with less mental overhead. It is a great reminder that modern tooling and AI have lowered the barrier to turning ideas into working software, without stripping away creativity or craftsmanship. After listening to this one, you might just pick up that unused domain name and make something! 😉

Understand what keeps open source sustainable

If you were around the tech scene in 2021, you probably remember the absolute chaos that came with the Log4Shell vulnerability that was exposed in November that year. That vulnerability (and others since then) put a spotlight on the world’s dependence on underfunded open source infrastructure. But, money can’t solve all of the world’s problems, unfortunately. From Log4Shell to the Sovereign Tech Fund is a really interesting conversation about why success is not just about funding, but also community health, processes, and communication. By the end, you come away with a deeper appreciation for the invisible labor behind the tools you rely on, and a clearer sense of how individuals, companies, and governments can show up more responsibly.

Align your skills with real-world trends

2025 really has been the year of growth and change across projects. The Octoverse report analyzes the state of open source across 1.12 billion open source contributions, 518 million merged pull requests, 180 million developers… you get the idea, a lot of numbers and a lot of data. TypeScript’s Takeover, AI’s Lift-Off: Inside the 2025 Octoverse Report grounds the conversation in data from GitHub’s Octoverse report, turning billions of contributions into meaningful signals. The discussion helps connect trends like TypeScript’s rise, AI-assisted workflows, and even COBOL’s unexpected resurgence to real decisions developers face: what to learn next, where to invest time, and how to stay adaptable. Rather than predicting the future, it offers something more useful: a clearer picture of the present and how to navigate what comes next.

Understand what privacy-first software looks like in practice

As more everyday devices become connected, it is getting harder to tell where convenience ends and control begins. This episode offers a refreshing counterpoint. Recorded live at GitHub Universe 2025, the conversation with Frank “Frenck” Nijhof explores how Home Assistant has grown into one of the most active open source projects in the world by prioritizing local control, privacy, and long-term sustainability.

Listening to Privacy-First Smart Homes with Frenck from Home Assistant shifts how you think about automation and ownership. You hear how millions of households run smart homes without relying on the cloud, why the Open Home Foundation exists to fight vendor lock-in and e-waste, and how a welcoming community scaled to more than 21,000 contributors. The discussion also opens up what contribution can look like beyond writing code, showing how documentation, testing, and community support play a critical role. It is a reminder that building better technology often starts with clearer values and more inclusive ways to participate. Plus, you get to hear about the weird and wonderful ways people use Home Assistant to power their lives. 

Take this with you

As we look toward 2026, these episodes share a common thread. They encourage building with clarity, curiosity, and care for your tools, your community, and yourself. Whether you are listening while traveling, winding down for the year, or planning what you want to focus on next, we hope these conversations help you start the year feeling more grounded and inspired.

And if you speed through these episodes, don’t worry; we have so many more fantastic episodes from this season. You can listen to every episode of the GitHub Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, or watch them on YouTube. We are excited to see what you build in 2026.

The post 5 podcast episodes to help you build with confidence in 2026 appeared first on The GitHub Blog.

From Appwrite to Zulip, the Open Source Zone at Universe 2025 was stacked with projects that pushed boundaries and turned heads. These twelve open source teams brought the creativity, the engineering craft, and the “I need to try that” demos that make Universe special. Here’s a closer look at what they showcased this year.

If you want to join them in 2026, applications for next year’s Open Source Zone are open now!

Appwrite: Backend made simple

Appwrite is an open source backend platform that helps developers build secure and scalable apps without boilerplate. With APIs for databases, authentication, storage, and more, it’s become a go-to foundation for web and mobile developers who want to ship faster.

Origin story: Appwrite Appwrite was created in 2019 by Eldad Fux as a side project, and it quickly grew from a weekend project to one of the fastest-growing developer platforms on GitHub, with over 50,000 stars and hundreds of contributors worldwide. 

GoReleaser: Effortless release automation for Go

GoReleaser automates packaging, publishing, and distributing Go projects so developers can ship faster with less stress. With strong support from its contributor base, it has become the go-to release engineering tool for Go maintainers who want to focus on building rather than busywork.

🚦 Go go go, GoReleaser: GoReleaser started life in 2015 as a simple release.sh script. Within a year, @caarlos0, rewrote it in Go with YAML configs, during his holiday break—instead of, you know, actually taking a holiday. That rewrite became the foundation of what’s now a tool with over 15,000 stars and paying customers worldwide. GitHub included! E.g. for GitHub CLI.

And can we all just take a minute to applaud the GoReleaser logo?!

💡 Fun fact: one of my colleagues, @ashleymcnamara, has created a secession (that’s the word for a bunch of Gophers—I checked!) of iconic Gopher designs that have become part of Go’s visual culture. If you’ve seen a Gopher sticker at a conference, odds are it came from her repo. Watch out, Ashley. Looks like you have some competition.

Homebrew: The missing package manager for macOS

Speaking of great logos. Homebrew is the de facto package manager for macOS, beloved by developers for making it simple to install, manage, and update software from the command line. From data scientists to DevOps engineers, millions rely on Homebrew every day to bootstrap their environments, automate workflows, and keep projects running smoothly.

Thanks for having us! GitHub Universe was a great opportunity to re-energize by meeting users and fellow maintainers.

Issy Long, Senior Software Engineer & Homebrew Lead Maintainer

Ladybird: A browser for the bold

Ladybird is an ambitious and independent open source browser being built from scratch with performance, security, and privacy in mind. What began as a humble HTML viewer is now evolving into one of the most exciting projects in the browser space, supported by a rapidly growing global community.

💡 Did you know: Ladybird started life in 2018 as a tiny HTML viewer tucked inside the SerenityOS operating system. Fast-forward a few years and it’s grown up into a full-fledged, from-scratch browser with a buzzing open source community—1200 contributors and counting!

Moondream: Tiny AI, big vision

Moondream is an open source visual language model that brings visual intelligence for everyone. With a tiny 1 GB footprint and blazing performance, it runs anywhere from laptops to edge devices without the need for GPUs or complex infrastructure. Developers can caption images, detect objects, follow gaze, read documents, and more using natural language prompts. With more than 6 million downloads and thousands of GitHub stars, Moondream is trusted across industries from healthcare to robotics, making state-of-the-art vision AI as simple as writing a line of code.

Oh My Zsh: Supercharge your shell

Oh My Zsh is a community-driven framework that makes the Zsh shell stylish, powerful, and endlessly customizable. With hundreds of plugins and themes and millions of users, it is one of the most beloved ways to supercharge the command line.

People get really into customizing their prompts—myself included—but GitHub’s @casidoo raised the bar with her blog post. Safe to say her prompt looks way cooler than mine. For now… 😈

💡 Fun fact: Oh My Zsh started in 2009 as a weekend project by Robby Russell, and it’s now one of the most popular open-source frameworks for managing Zsh configs, with thousands of plugins and themes contributed by the community. <3

OpenCV: The computer vision powerhouse

OpenCV is the most widely used open source computer vision library in the world, powering robotics, medical imaging, and cutting-edge AI research. With a vast community of contributors, it remains the essential toolkit for developers working with images and video.

🧐 Did you know: OpenCV started in 1999 at Intel as a research project and today it powers everything from self-driving cars to Instagram filters, with over 40,000 stars on GitHub and millions of users worldwide!

Open Source Project Security Baseline (OSPSB): Raising the bar

Security isn’t glamorous, but maintaining a healthy open source ecosystem depends on it—and that’s where the Open Source Project Security Baseline (OSPSB) comes in. OSPSB, an initiative from the OpenSSF community, gives maintainers a practical, no-nonsense checklist of what “good security” actually looks like. Instead of vague best practices, it focuses on realistic, minimum requirements that any project can meet, no matter the size of the team.

At Universe 2025, OSPSB resonated with maintainers looking for clarity in a world of shifting threats. The maturity levels and self-assessment tools make it simple to understand where your project is strong, where it needs improvement, and how users can contribute back to security work — a win for the entire ecosystem.

💡 Fun fact: OSPSB is used by hundreds of projects as a self-assessment tool, and it’s supported by the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund to help maintainers keep their software resilient.

The resilience and sustainability of open source is a shared responsibility between maintainers and users. Beyond telling consumers why they should trust your project, Baseline will also tell them where they can contribute to security improvements.

Xavier René-Corail, Senior Director, GitHub Security Research

p5.js and Processing for Creative Coding

p5.js is a beginner-friendly JavaScript library that makes coding accessible for artists, educators, and developers alike. From interactive art to generative visuals, it empowers millions to express ideas through code and brings creative coding into classrooms and communities worldwide.

Processing is an open-source programming environment designed to teach code through visual art and interactive media. Used by artists, educators, and students worldwide, it bridges technology and creativity, making programming accessible, playful, and expressive.

PixiJS: Powering graphics on the web

PixiJS  is a powerful HTML5 engine for creating stunning 2D graphics on the web. Built on top of WebGL and WebGPU, it delivers one of the fastest and most flexible rendering experiences available. With an intuitive API, support for custom shaders, advanced text rendering, multi-touch interactivity, and accessibility features, PixiJS empowers developers to craft beautiful, interactive experiences that run smoothly across desktop, mobile, and beyond. With over 46,000 stars on GitHub and adoption by hundreds of global brands, PixiJS has become the go-to toolkit for building games, applications, and large-scale visualizations in the browser.

💡 Fun fact: PixiJS has been around for more than 12 years and has powered everything from hit games like Happy Wheels and Subway Surfers to immersive art installations projected onto city buildings. Developer Simone Seagle used PixiJS to bring The Met’s Open Access artworks to life—animating Kandinsky’s Violett with spring physics and transforming Monet’s water lilies into a swirling, interactive experience.

SparkJS: Splat the limits of 3D

Spark (no, not that one!) is an advanced 3D Gaussian Splatting renderer for THREE.js, letting developers blend cutting-edge research with the most popular JavaScript 3D engine on the web. Portable, fast, and surprisingly lightweight, SparkJS brings real-time splat rendering to almost any device with correct sorting, animation support, and compatibility for major splat formats like .PLY, .SPZ, and .KSPLAT.

What is Gaussian Splatting? Gaussian Splatting is a graphics technique that represents 3D objects as millions of tiny, semi-transparent ellipsoids (“splats”) instead of heavy polygon meshes. It delivers photorealistic detail, smooth surfaces, and fast real-time performance, making it a rising star in computer vision, neural rendering, and now, thanks to Spark, everyday web development.

Zulip: Conversations that scale

Zulip is the open source team chat platform built for thoughtful communication at scale. Unlike traditional chat apps where conversations quickly become noise, Zulip’s unique topic-based threading keeps discussions organized and discoverable, even days later. With integrations, bots, and clients for every platform, Zulip helps distributed teams collaborate without the chaos.

💡 Fun fact: Zulip began as a small startup in 2012, was acquired by Dropbox in 2014, and open sourced in 2015. Today it has over 1500 contributors worldwide, powering communities, classrooms, nonprofits, and companies that need conversations to stay useful.

We want to thank the maintainers for participating at GitHub Universe in the Open Source Zone, and for your projects that are making our world turn. You all are what open source is about! <3

Even if you didn’t get to meet these folks at Universe, it’s never too late to check out their work. Or, you can keep powering open source by contributing to or sponsoring a project.

The post This year’s most influential open source projects appeared first on The GitHub Blog.