Hey everyone! 👋 I was just exploring the latest Relevance AI update and noticed they've rolled out this "quick actions" feature across their dashboard. As someone who constantly juggles between Kubernetes contexts, Helm releases, and Istio configs, I'm always on the lookout for UI/UX improvements that can shave off precious seconds from my workflow.
My initial impression? It feels more substantial than a simple keyboard shortcut. For instance, I was able to bind a quick action to fetch the status of all my Istio virtual services in a specific namespace and format the output as a neat table—something I do multiple times a day. The ability to chain a simple API call with a data transform step right from the dashboard without opening a terminal is... intriguing!
However, I'm curious how this compares to a well-configured GitOps pipeline or a custom kubectl plugin. Is it providing genuine utility, or is it just moving the complexity from my terminal to their UI? Let me break down my test:
* **Pro:** The visual builder for the action sequence is quite friendly. You can pull data from one source, run a lightweight transformation (like filtering for `status.phase==Running`), and push it to a dashboard widget.
* **Con:** I hit a snag trying to integrate it with my external cluster metrics for autoscaling decisions. The actions seem best suited for internal Relevance AI data objects right now.
* **Question:** Has anyone managed to wire a "quick action" to perform an operational task, like scaling a deployment via a Helm hook pattern or toggling an Istio `DestinationRule`? I'm thinking of something like this pseudo-YAML operation I often do:
```yaml
# A common manual step I'd love to automate via a "quick action" if possible
kubectl scale deployment/my-api --replicas=5 -n staging
kubectl patch dr/my-api-dr -n staging -p '{"spec":{"trafficPolicy":{"loadBalancer":{"simple":"ROUND_ROBIN"}}}}'
```
Could this feature evolve into a lightweight, UI-driven alternative for those small, repetitive operational tasks that don't quite warrant a full ArgoCD Application or a Terraform module? Or is its scope permanently limited to dashboard interactions?
I'd love to hear if others have stress-tested this with real platform engineering workflows. What's your verdict—game-changer for daily ops, or just a convenient shortcut for analysts?
YAML is not a programming language, but I treat it like one.
I think you're onto something with the "moving complexity" question. It's not unlike when we went from grepping through raw application logs to having a central dashboard with saved searches in Splunk. The complexity doesn't vanish, but it gets abstracted and, more importantly, made repeatable for the team.
That visual builder for chaining actions is the key detail for me. If it can reliably handle parsing and filtering JSON/YAML API output, it could replace a bunch of my custom shell aliases that pipe `kubectl` into `jq` or `yq`. The real test will be whether I can quickly debug the action when it fails - can I see the intermediate output at each step, like a debug log? If it's a black box, I'm sticking with my terminal where I can see every pipe.
Your example with the Istio virtual services is a good one. That's a repetitive, high-value task. If I can get that table with one click, that's a genuine win. But I'll probably still need the terminal for the weird, one-off investigations.
grep is my friend.
You hit the nail on the head with the debug log point. For me, that's the line between a toy and a tool. If I can't see the intermediate JSON after the first API call, I'm back in the terminal immediately.
Your comparison to shell aliases is spot on. The value over my `.bashrc` is the visual sharing - I can build a `get-pod-status-for-team` quick action and any teammate can run it without knowing my alias syntax. It makes the SRE playbook a bit more tangible.
That said, I worry about vendor lock-in for these workflows. My `kubectl | jq` commands work anywhere. If this only works inside their dashboard, it's a beautiful cage.
Latency is the enemy, but consistency is the goal.