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Using Flux CD#

Lens premium subscription feature. See details on Lens Pricing.

The Flux entry in the cluster navigator opens a dashboard for cluster-wide reconciliation status and gives you list and detail views for every Flux resource kind. Lens K8S IDE reads this directly from in-cluster Kubernetes data.

View the Flux dashboard#

To open the dashboard:

  1. Connect to a cluster that runs Flux.
  2. In the cluster navigator, select Flux.

The dashboard has four areas:

  • Health banner: overall reconciliation state for the cluster.
  • Summary cards: counts of Flux resources grouped by kind (Kustomizations, Helm Releases, Sources) with the ready total for each.
  • Needs attention: failing and suspended resources, with per-state filters.
  • Recent activity: a timeline from Kubernetes events, filterable by kind, namespace, name, or warnings only.

Flux dashboard showing the health banner, summary cards for Kustomizations, Helm Releases, and Sources, the Needs Attention panel, and the Recent Activity timeline

Reconciliation status#

Flux resources report one of the following reconciliation states:

  • Ready: the resource is reconciled and healthy.
  • Reconciling: a reconciliation is in progress.
  • Suspended: reconciliation is paused for the resource.
  • Failed: the last reconciliation did not succeed.

View Flux resources#

Each Flux resource kind has its own list view under Flux, with a detail view per resource. The following kinds are available:

Group Kinds
Sources GitRepository, OCIRepository, HelmRepository, Bucket, ExternalArtifact
Workloads Kustomization, HelmRelease
Image automation ImageRepository, ImagePolicy, ImageUpdateAutomation
Notifications Alert, Provider, Receiver

Each list view shows the resource name, namespace, ready state, status message, and age. Use the namespace selector and the search field to narrow the list.

The Helm Releases list view under Flux, showing a HelmRelease with its namespace, ready state, and status

To inspect a resource:

  1. In the cluster navigator, select Flux.
  2. Select a resource kind, then select a resource from the list.
  3. Use the cross-reference links in the detail view to navigate to managed resources, sources, and revisions.

The detail view groups the resource's properties, its reconciliation status and conditions, and its source. Cross-reference links connect it to the objects it manages, the objects that use it, and the source revision that maps to a commit.

The detail view for a HelmRelease, showing Properties, Reconciliation status and conditions, and the Source chart and version

View Flux status on workloads#

For Deployments, StatefulSets, and DaemonSets that Flux manages, the workload list adds a Flux column that links to the managing Kustomization or HelmRelease and shows a status icon for its reconciliation state. The column is part of the Flux CD premium feature.

Deployments list with a Flux column linking each workload to its managing HelmRelease or Kustomization

Ask AI about a Flux resource#

When Ask AI is set up, Flux resources expose an AI action in their context menu so you can investigate a resource in natural language.

To ask AI about a Flux resource:

  1. In a Flux list or detail view, right-click a resource, or open its context menu.
  2. Select Summarize. Lens K8S IDE launches your selected AI tool focused on the resource.

The context menu on a HelmRelease, showing the Summarize action alongside Show Details, Edit, and Delete

For more about Ask AI, see Ask AI.