[CNCF LFX Proposal] Kyverno: AI Assistant

### CNCF Project

Kyverno

### Term

2026 Term 3 (Sep-Nov)

### Program Name

AI Assistant

### Program Description

## Description

Kyverno's maintainers spend significant recurring effort on low-judgment, repetitive tasks: reviewing/merging Dependabot PRs, keeping open PRs rebased with main and re-running CI, triaging a high volume of incoming issues, reproducing bug reports, running the right subset of conformance/unit tests for a given diff, and answering repeat questions in Slack/GitHub Discussions. This work competes for maintainer time with code review, design, and roadmap work, and slows down contributor turnaround (stale PRs, delayed triage labels, slow first response on issues).

## Expected Outcomes

Build an AI Maintainer Assistant: a sandboxed, permission-scoped autonomous agent (e.g., running an agent runtime such as OpenHands/OpenClaw/Hermes-style sandboxed coding agent) that runs on a schedule and via GitHub/Slack webhooks to automate routine maintainer workflows, always via auditable, revertible actions (comments, labels, draft PRs).

### Technologies

AI Engineering, AI agent harness, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, GitHub Actions, Hermes

### Skills same as Technologies?

- [x] Yes, the required skills are the same as the technologies listed above.

### Required/Desirable Skills

_No response_

### Mentors

Jim Bugwadia | @JimBugwadia | jim@nirmata.com | JimBugwadia
Shuting Zhao | @realshuting | shuting@nirmata.com | ShutingZhao

### Upstream Issue URL

https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/issues/16665

### Application Prerequisites

- [x] Resume
- [x] Cover Letter
- [ ] School Enrollment Verification
- [ ] Participation Permission from school or employer
- [ ] Coding Challenge
- [x] Custom Prerequisite (fill in details below)

### Coding Challenge URL

_No response_

### Custom Prerequisite Name

Solution Video

### Custom Prerequisite Description

Create a 2-5 minute video introducing yourself and then articulating your understanding of the problem and the proposed solution. Provide a link to the video on either Google Drive or YouTube as part of your cover letter.

### Custom Prerequisite — File Upload

- [ ] Yes — completion of this task requires the mentee to submit a file.

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**LFX program:** [CNCF - Kyverno: AI Assistant (2026 Term 3)](https://mentorship.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/project/c869e19a-8815-459b-8a2d-3a068e8863c3)

Start by reading the upstream Kyverno issue #16665 and this proposal, then investigate the listed GitHub Actions, webhook, sandbox, and agent-harness requirements. Done means a permission-scoped assistant can automate the stated maintainer workflows through auditable, revertible comments, labels, or draft pull requests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.