Helmingway

Helmingway is a VS Code extension for previewing the Kubernetes manifests generated from a Helm chart while you edit it.

Define values for environments such as dev, staging, and prod, then open rendered manifests from VS Code sidebar, filter Kubernetes resources you want to inspect, and compare the differences between releases.

Demo

Features

• Preview helm template output directly in VS Code
• Compare manifests generated from different environments or values
• Automatically refresh previews when local charts or valueFiles change
• Toggle individual Kubernetes resources such as Deployments, Services, and ConfigMaps
• Compare two releases in VS Code's side-by-side diff editor
• See releases with failed Helm rendering in the sidebar

Requirements

• VS Code ^1.115.0
• A helm CLI available on your PATH
• A helmingway.yaml file in the workspace root

Basic Usage

1. Open a workspace that contains your Helm chart in VS Code
2. Create helmingway.yaml in the workspace root
3. Open Helmingway from the Activity Bar on the left
4. Click the reload button in the upper-right corner of the view
5. Select a release in the sidebar to open the rendered manifest preview

Expand a release to see the rendered Kubernetes resources. Toggle checkboxes to choose which resources are included in the preview.

To compare releases, select two release nodes and run Compare from the context menu.

Configuration

helmingway.yaml defines the charts and releases you want to inspect. Local chart paths and values file paths are resolved relative to the workspace root.

helm:
  charts:
    - name: example
      source: ./charts/example
      releases:
        - name: dev
          valueFiles:
            - ./env/dev.yaml
          values:
            image:
              tag: dev

        - name: prod
          namespace: production
          valueFiles:
            - ./env/prod.yaml

Chart Sources

Each chart.source defines a Helm chart input. You can use a local directory, packaged chart, repository reference, URL, or OCI reference.

Source format	Example
repository reference	bitnami/nginx
local chart directory	./charts/example
packaged chart	./dist/example-0.1.0.tgz
HTTP(S) URL	https://example.com/chart.tgz
OCI reference	oci://registry.example.com/charts/app

Releases

Each release defines the values and namespace used to render a chart.

Field	Required	Description
name	yes	Release name passed to helm template
namespace	no	Namespace passed to helm template; defaults to default
valueFiles	no	Values files passed in order as --values
values	no	Inline values written to a temporary file before rendering