Architecture

Robusta uses HolmesGPT, an open source AI agent, to automatically investigate and root-cause Kubernetes alerts. HolmesGPT runs as part of the in-cluster Agent, connects to your existing data sources, and reports findings through the Robusta Platform (SaaS or self-hosted).


Agent (In-Cluster)

The Robusta Agent runs inside your Kubernetes cluster. It includes HolmesGPT and is responsible for:

  • Fetching data from external data sources

  • Optional: for customers troubleshooting issues on Kubernetes itself, track new deploys and changes to Kubernetes and query Kubernetes events

The Agent keeps your data secure — it fetches data from your data sources directly, so there is no direct connection from the Robusta Platform to your data sources.

Robusta Platform

The Robusta Platform is a centralized place to control your SRE agents and chat with them. It is available as SaaS (hosted by Robusta) or self-hosted (for enterprise deployments).

The Platform receives investigation results from HolmesGPT and provides:

  • AI-powered root cause analysis results for every alert

  • Centralized alert management and triage

  • Historical alert analysis and timelines

  • HolmesGPT Slack and Teams bot — tag the AI agent like a teammate to investigate issues on demand

Data Sources

HolmesGPT integrates with a wide range of data sources in your environment to gather evidence during investigations.

All data source connections are made by the Agent within your environment. The Robusta Platform never connects to your data sources directly.

Security & Networking

  • The Agent runs entirely within your cluster with configurable RBAC permissions

  • Data sources are accessed only by the in-cluster Agent, never by the Platform

  • SaaS connectivity is outbound-only — no inbound access is required

  • All data remains in your cluster unless explicitly sent to configured sinks or the Robusta Platform

Next Steps

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A Note on Robusta Classic

You may see references to "Robusta Classic" in parts of this documentation. Robusta Classic is the original open source alert engine that provides deterministic, rule-based enrichment using configurable playbooks — automatically attaching pod logs, resource state, and related events to alerts before routing them to Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, and other notification channels.

Robusta Classic can be installed as part of the Agent and runs alongside HolmesGPT, if you like.